<a id="post-ideas-list"></a>
- * I still need to finish drafting my reply to [Ozy's reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)
+ * <a id="reply-to-ozy"></a>I still need to finish drafting my reply to [Ozy's reply](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/man-should-allocate-some-more-categories/) to [my reply](http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) to [the immortal Scott Alexander](http://web.archive.org/web/20200610230130/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/)
* I've got ~4800 words drafted, but it needs a _lot_ more work in order to make it a maximally clear and maximally defensible blog post
* A _brief_ (only ~350 words) summary—
* I hopefully-accurately summarize Ozy as trying to make a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, claiming that my arguments relying on the relevance of psychological sex differences would imply that lesbians aren't women, which is absurd.
* a short epistemic horror story (with a magical-realism twist at the end) about a young [gender-critical feminist](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/TERF) (who is _surprisingly_ knowledgable about evolutionary psychology) who gets wrongfully involuntarily committed after losing a night of sleep and is assigned an MtF roommate in the psych ward
* and more
-... and just, I don't know. I've been _pretty upset_ lately in the way that I've been on-and-off [upset](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jan/im-sick-of-being-lied-to/) for the last two and a half years, where in addition to this _creepy_ and _absurd_ pseudonymous blog that I don't even have the willpower to write at a decent pace (see the above list of things-yet-left-unwritten), I keep getting into arguments with people in real life (or in [Discord](https://discordapp.com/) servers that feel real-life-adjacent) who seem to think that guys like me can _literally_ be women _by means of saying so_.
+... and just, I don't know. I've been _pretty upset_ lately in the way that I've been on-and-off [upset](/2017/Jan/im-sick-of-being-lied-to/) for the last two and a half years, where in addition to this _creepy_ and _absurd_ pseudonymous blog that I don't even have the willpower to write at a decent pace (see the above list of things-yet-left-unwritten), I keep getting into arguments with people in real life (or in [Discord](https://discordapp.com/) servers that feel real-life-adjacent) who seem to think that guys like me can _literally_ be women _by means of saying so_.
-And it's just _not true_. It's just _so obviously not true_. [(Given current technology.)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions)
+And it's just _not true_. It's just _so obviously not true_. <a id="changing-emotions-link"></a>[(Given current technology.)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions)
So, I'm an intellectual. I _realize_ very well that "It's obviously not true" isn't an argument that someone could engage with. So I do make arguments. I try very hard to be careful to explain the empirical claims I'm making and point to evidence, and try to anticipate and disclaim in advance the most probable misinterpretations of what I'm saying, and demonstrate that I understand that words can be used in many ways depending on context, but that I'm trying to use language to point to a particular empirical statistical structure in the world, and that becomes a lot more cumbersome to express if I'm not allowed to use this word with this widely-used definition/[extension](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HsznWM9A7NiuGsp28/extensions-and-intensions) ...
-I'm not perfect. Especially in real-time discussions (text or meatspace), I can often look back and point to things that I said that were wrong, and know that I have sinned: "Oh, that wasn't quite fair of me; oh, that was kind of [bravery-debatey](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/) of me; oh, I should have more carefully distinguished between those claims."
+I'm not perfect. Especially in real-time discussions (text or meatspace), I can often look back and point to things that I said that were wrong, and know that I have sinned: "Oh, that wasn't quite fair of me; oh, that was kind of [bravery-debatey](http://web.archive.org/web/20200618055932/https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/18/against-bravery-debates/) of me; oh, I should have more carefully distinguished between those claims."
I'm not perfect, but I think I'm _pretty good_. Even if I don't agree with someone about the facts—even if I don't agree with someone about what [policy trade-offs](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided) to make, including policy trade-offs about how to use language—surely, _surely_ we can at least agree on my meta-level point about _cognitive_ costs being part of the policy trade-off about how to use language?
And somehow it _doesn't land_. It's like talking to a tape recorder that just endlessly repeats, "Ha-ha! [I can define a word any way I want](http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/)! You can't use that concept unless you can provide explicit necessary-and-sufficient conditions to classify a series of ever-more obscure and contrived edge cases!"
-Although I do have a couple favorite edge cases of my own. I generally prefer not to involve named individuals in arguments, even public figures: it's unclassy. But having nothing left, I pull out a [photograph of Danielle Muscato](http://daniellemuscato.startlogic.com/uploads/3/4/9/3/34938114/2249042_orig.jpg). "Look," I say. "This is a photograph of a man. You can see it, too, right? Right?"
+<a id="photo-of-danielle-muscato"></a>Although I do have a couple favorite edge cases of my own. I generally prefer not to involve named individuals in arguments, even public figures: it's unclassy. But having nothing left, I pull out a [photograph of Danielle Muscato](http://daniellemuscato.startlogic.com/uploads/3/4/9/3/34938114/2249042_orig.jpg). "Look," I say. "This is a photograph of a man. You can see it, too, right? Right?"
And they say, "It's possible to be mistaken about cis people's genders, too."
Maybe with more time and more effort I could find _exactly_ the right words to cover every possible caveat and nitpick and _finally_ be able to communicate the thing—
-But maybe I just need to relax. Not take it so seriously. Forget about the topic for a few days or a few months. Wash the goddamned dishes, write some goddamned code. _Maybe_ it's not [the end of the world](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/) if someone is Wrong on the Internet.
+But maybe I just need to relax. Not take it so seriously. Forget about the topic for a few days or a few months. Wash the goddamned dishes, write some goddamned code. _Maybe_ it's not [the end of the world](/2017/Jan/from-what-ive-tasted-of-desire/) if someone is Wrong on the Internet.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff