While I was waiting for internet service to be connected in my new apartment, I read a paper copy of _Nevada_ by Imogen Binnie. (I don't recall how I came across the recommendation.) It's about a trans woman in New York City named Maria Griffiths who steals her girlfriend's car to go on a road trip, and ends up meeting an autogynephilic young man named James H. in a Wal-Mart in Star City, Nevada, whereupon she tries to convince James that _autogynephilia_ is a bogus concept and that he's actually trans.
-In Berkeley, I met some really interesting people who seemed similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life—much as Maria and James immediately recognize each other as similar but different in _Nevada_. (I see where the pattern-matching faculties in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.)
+In Berkeley, I met some really interesting people who seemed similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life—much like how Maria and James immediately recognize each other as similar but different in _Nevada_. (I saw where the pattern-matching faculties in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.)
This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_ (as mentioned above), but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
I say all this to emphasize just how much Yudkowsky's opinion meant to me. If you were a devout Catholic, and something in the Pope's latest encyclical seemed wrong according to your understanding of Scripture, and you had the opportunity to talk it over with the Pope for a measly $1000, wouldn't you take it? Of course you would!
-<a id="cheerful-price-privacy-constraint"></a>Anyway, I can't talk about the results of my cheerful price inquiry (whether he accepted the offer and a conversation occured, or what was said if it did occur), because I think the rule I should follow for telling this Whole Dumb Story is that while I have complete freedom to talk about _my_ actions and things that happened in public, I'm not allowed to divulge information about what Yudkowsky may or may not have said in private conversations that may or may not have occured, because even without an explicit secrecy promise, people might be less forthcoming in private conversations if they knew that you might blog about them later. Personally, I think most people are _way_ too paranoid about this; I often wish I could just say what relevant things I know without worrying about whether it might infringe on someone's "privacy". (This secrecy-hating trait probably correlates with the autogynephilia blogging; someone otherwise like me who believed in privacy wouldn't be telling you this Whole Dumb Story.) But I feel morally obligated to cooperate with widely-held norms even if I personally think they're dumb.
+<a id="cheerful-price-privacy-constraint"></a>Anyway, I can't talk about the results of my cheerful price inquiry (whether he accepted the offer and a conversation occured, or what was said if it did occur), because I think the rule I should follow for telling this Whole Dumb Story is that while I have complete freedom to talk about _my_ actions and things that happened in public, I'm not allowed to divulge information about what Yudkowsky may or may not have said in private conversations that may or may not have occured, because even without an explicit secrecy promise, people might be less forthcoming in private conversations if they knew that you might blog about them later.Personally, I think most people are _way_ too paranoid about this; I often wish I could just say what relevant things I know without worrying about whether it might infringe on someone's "privacy". (This secrecy-hating trait probably correlates with the autogynephilia blogging; someone otherwise like me who believed in privacy wouldn't be telling you this Whole Dumb Story.) But I feel morally obligated to cooperate with widely-held norms even if I personally think they're dumb.
(Incidentally, it was also around this time that I snuck a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_ into the [MIRI](https://intelligence.org/) office library, which was sometimes possible for community members to visit. It seemed like something Harry Potter-Evans-Verres would do—and ominously, I noticed, not like something Hermione Granger would do.)
> the moment of liberating clarity when you resolve the tension between being a good person and the requirement to pretend to be stupid by deciding not to be a good person anymore 💖
-Michael Vassar emailed me about it, and we ended up meeting once. (I had also emailed him back in August, when I had heard from Anna that he was also skeptical of the transgender movement (Subject: "I've heard of fake geek girls, but this is ridiculous").)
+Former MIRI president Michael Vassar emailed me about it, and we ended up meeting once. (I had also emailed him back in August, when I had heard from Anna that he was also skeptical of the transgender movement (Subject: "I've heard of fake geek girls, but this is ridiculous").)
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In an effort to not let my anti–autogynephilia-denialism crusade take over my life, earlier that month, I [promised myself](/ancillary/a-broken-promise/) (and [published the SHA256 hash of the promise](https://www.facebook.com/zmdavis/posts/10154596054540199) to signal that I was Serious) not to comment on gender issues under my real name through June 2017—_that_ was what my new secret blog was for.
-Maybe it should have been obvious that that wasn't going to be a stable solution. Still, it seems like there ought to have been some way for it to not blow up quite so dramatically. To be continued.
+Maybe it should have been obvious that that wasn't going to be a stable solution. Still, it seems like there ought to have been some way for it to not blow up quite so dramatically as it would. To be continued.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff