If the extension of common words like 'woman' and 'man' is an issue of epistemic importance that rationalists should care about, then presumably so is Twitter's anti-misgendering policy—and if it _isn't_ (because you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning) then I'm not sure what's _left_ of the "Human's Guide to Words" sequence if the [37-part grand moral](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong) needs to be retracted.
-I think it _is_ standing in defense of truth if have an _argument_ for why my preferred word usage does a better job at "carving reality at the joints", and the one bringing my usage explicitly into question doesn't have such an argument. As such, I didn't see the _practical_ difference between "you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning", and "I can define a word any way I want." About which, again, a previous Eliezer Yudkowsky had written:
+I think I _am_ standing in defense of truth if have an _argument_ for _why_ my preferred word usage does a better job at "carving reality at the joints", and the one bringing my usage explicitly into question doesn't have such an argument. As such, I didn't see the _practical_ difference between "you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning", and "I can define a word any way I want." About which, again, a previous Eliezer Yudkowsky had written:
> ["It is a common misconception that you can define a word any way you like. [...] If you believe that you can 'define a word any way you like', without realizing that your brain goes on categorizing without your conscious oversight, then you won't take the effort to choose your definitions wisely."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3nxs2WYDGzJbzcLMp/words-as-hidden-inferences)
>
But having _done_ the reduction-to-cognitive-algorithms, it still looks like the person-in-the-street _has a point_ that I shouldn't be allowed to ignore just because I have 30 more IQ points and better philosophy-of-language skills? As it is written: "intelligence, to be useful, must be used for something other than defeating itself."
-I bring up my bad cosplay photos as an edge case that helps illustrate the problem I'm trying to point out, much like how people love to bring up [complete androgen insensitivity syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome) to illustrate why "But chromosomes!" isn't the correct reduction of sex classification. But to differentiate what I'm saying from mere blind transphobia, let me note that I predict that most people-in-the-street would be comfortable using feminine pronouns for someone like [Blaire White](http://msblairewhite.com/). That's evidence about the kind of cognitive work people's brains are doing when they use English language singular third-person pronouns! Certainly, English is not the only language; ours is not the only culture; maybe there is a way to do gender categories that would be more accurate and better for everyone! But to _find_ what that better way is, I think we need to be able to _talk_ about these kinds of details in public. And _in practice_, the attitude evinced in Yudkowsky's Tweets seemed to function as a [semantic stopsign](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FWMfQKG3RpZx6irjm/semantic-stopsigns) to get people to stop talking about the details.
+I bring up my bad cosplay photos as an edge case that helps illustrate the problem I'm trying to point out, much like how people love to bring up [complete androgen insensitivity syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome) to illustrate why "But chromosomes!" isn't the correct reduction of sex classification. But to differentiate what I'm saying from mere blind transphobia, let me note that I predict that most people-in-the-street would be comfortable using feminine pronouns for someone like [Blaire White](http://msblairewhite.com/) (a "homosexual transsexual" who passes very well). That's evidence about the kind of cognitive work people's brains are doing when they use English language singular third-person pronouns! Certainly, English is not the only language; ours is not the only culture; maybe there is a way to do gender categories that would be more accurate and better for everyone! But to _find_ what that better way is, I think we need to be able to _talk_ about these kinds of details in public. And _in practice_, the attitude evinced in Yudkowsky's Tweets seemed to function as a [semantic stopsign](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FWMfQKG3RpZx6irjm/semantic-stopsigns) to get people to stop talking about the details.
If you were actually interested in having a real discussion (instead of a fake discussion that makes you look good to progressives), why would you slap down the "But, but, chromosomes" idiocy and then not engage with the _drop-dead obvious_ "But, but, clusters in high-dimensional configuration space that [aren't actually changeable with contemporary technology](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions)" steelman, [which was, in fact, brought up in the replies](https://twitter.com/EnyeWord/status/1068983389716385792)?
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff