Title: From What I've Tasted of Desire
Date: 2017-01-24 22:48
Category: commentary
+Tags: bullet-biting, my robot cult
-> Oh, we have to get this right
-> Yes, we have to make them see
+> _Oh, we have to get this right
+> Yes, we have to make them see_
>
> —["Ballad of the Crystal Empire"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kESi3hksPg0), _My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic_
-_(Epistemic status: far more plausible than it has any right to be.)_
+_(Epistemic status: somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but also far more plausible than it has any right to be. Assumes the correctness of [Blanchard's transsexualism typology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard's_transsexualism_typology) without arguing it here.)_
So, not a lot of people understand this, but the end of the world is, in fact, nigh. _Conditional_ on civilization not collapsing (which is itself a _kind_ of end of the world), sometime in the next century or so, someone is going to invent better-than-human artificial general intelligence. And from that point on, humans are not really in control of what happens in this planet's future light cone.
Stereotypically at least, computer programming is _the_ quintessential profession of autogynephilic trans women, although it's unclear how much of this is inherent to the work (a correlation between erotic target location erroneousness and general nerdiness) and how much is just a selection effect (well-to-do programmers with non-customer-facing jobs in Silicon Valley can afford to take the "publicly decide that this is my True Gender Identity" trajectory, whereas businessmen, lawyers, and poor people are trapped in the "secret, shameful crossdressing/dreaming" trajectory).
-Thus, the bad [epistemic hygiene](http://lesswrong.com/lw/u/the_ethic_of_handwashing_and_community_epistemic/) habits of the trans community that are required to maintain the socially-acceptable alibi that transitioning is about expressing some innate "gender identity", are necessarily spread to the computer science community, as an [intransigent minority](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15) of trans activist-types successfully enforce social norms mandating that everyone must _pretend not to notice_ that trans women are eccentric men. With social reality placing such tight constraints on perception of actual reality, our chances of developing the advanced epistemology needed to rise to the occasion of solving the alignment problem seem slim at best.
+Thus, the bad [epistemic hygiene](http://lesswrong.com/lw/u/the_ethic_of_handwashing_and_community_epistemic/) habits of the trans community that are required to maintain the socially-acceptable alibi that transitioning is about expressing some innate "gender identity", are necessarily spread to the computer science community, as an [intransigent minority](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15) of trans activist-types successfully enforce social norms mandating that everyone must _pretend not to notice_ that trans women are eccentric men. With social reality placing such tight constraints on perception of actual reality, our chances of developing the advanced epistemology needed to rise to the occasion of solving the alignment problem seem slim at best. (If we can't put our weight down on the right answer to a _really easy_ scientific question like the two-type taxonomy of MtF—which lots of people [just _notice_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do/) without having to do careful research—then what hope do we have for hard problems?)
Essentially, we may be living in a scenario where the world is _literally destroyed specifically because no one wants to talk about their masturbation fantasies_.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff