...
-I'm sorry, but I can't take this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously_ lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. (When speaking or writing quickly without taking the time to [scrupulously check every sentence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases#2__The_law_of_no_literal_falsehood_), it's [common for little untruths and distortions to slip into one's speech](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pZSpbxPrftSndTdSf/honesty-beyond-internal-truth). Everyone does it, and if you think you don't, then you're lying.)
+I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble taking this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously_ lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. (When speaking or writing quickly without taking the time to [scrupulously check every sentence](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases#2__The_law_of_no_literal_falsehood_), it's [common for little untruths and distortions to slip into one's speech](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pZSpbxPrftSndTdSf/honesty-beyond-internal-truth). Everyone does it, and if you think you don't, then you're lying.)
Nevertheless, I am _incredibly_ skeptical that Yudkowsky _actually_ doesn't know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to sex categories more firmly than a given name is attached to someone's appearance.
>
> Sometimes a random number generator only tells you what you already know.
-But the text of the story doesn't _say_ Aerhien isn't a "man"; it merely refers to her with she/her pronouns! If Yudkowsky "couldn't make [the character] a man", but the only unambiguous in-text consequence of this is that the chacter takes she/her pronouns, that would seem to be treating sex and pronouns as synonymous; the comment _only makes sense_ if Yudkowsky thinks the difference between _she_ and _he_ is semantically meaningful.
-
-(It's possible that he changed his mind about this between 2009 and 2021, but if so, you'd expect the 2021 Facebook discussion to explain why he changed his mind, rather than claiming that he "do[es] not know what it feels like from the inside" to hold the position implied by his 2009 comments.)
+But the text of the story doesn't _say_ Aerhien isn't a "man"; it merely refers to her with she/her pronouns! If Yudkowsky "couldn't make [the character] a man", but the only unambiguous in-text consequence of this is that the chacter takes she/her pronouns, that would seem to be treating sex and pronouns as synonymous; the comment _only makes sense_ if Yudkowsky thinks the difference between _she_ and _he_ is semantically meaningful. (It's possible that he changed his mind about this between 2009 and 2021, but if so, you'd expect the 2021 Facebook discussion to explain why he changed his mind, rather than claiming that he "do[es] not know what it feels like from the inside" to hold the position implied by his 2009 comments.)
In the Facebook comments, Yudkowsky continues:
Personally, I have a _lot_ of sympathy for this, because in an earlier stage of my ideological evolution, I _was_ one of those people. (I [tried to use an ostensibly gender-neutral nickname and byline for a while in the late 'aughts](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/#literary-initials), and while I never asked for new pronouns, this is probably a matter of Overton window placement rather than any underlying difference in sentiments; it seems pretty likely that my analogue growing up in the current year's ideological environment would be a trans woman.)
-But it's important to not use sympathy as an excuse to blur together different rationales, or obfuscate our analysis of the costs and benefits to different parties of different policies. "Systematically de-gender English because that's a superior language design" and "Don't misgender trans people because trans people are sympathetic" are _different_ political projects with different victory conditions: victory for the de-genderers would mean singular _they_ or similar for everyone (as a matter of language design, no exceptions), which is very different from the [ask-and-share-pronouns norms](https://www.mypronouns.org/asking) championed by contemporary trans rights activists.
+But it's important to not use sympathy as an excuse to blur together different rationales, or obfuscate our analysis of the costs and benefits to different parties of different policies. "Systematically de-gender English because that's a superior language design" and "Don't misgender trans people because trans people are sympathetic" are _different_ political projects with different victory conditions: victory for the de-genderers would mean singular _they_ or similar for everyone (as a matter of language design, no idiosyncratic personal exceptions), which is very different from the [ask-and-share-pronouns norms](https://www.mypronouns.org/asking) championed by contemporary trans rights activists.
Perhaps it might make sense for adherents of a "degender English" movement to stategically _ally_ with the trans rights movement: to latch on to gender-dysphoric people's pain as a political weapon to destabilize what the English-degenderers think of as a bad pronoun system for _other reasons_. Fine.
[TODO: cite examples of this happening; as liberal intellectuals, we want to debate the optimal communication policy and expect to govern by assent; we're not so bloodthirsty as to want to throw dissenters in jail—but that is potentially what's at stake]
-[TODO: quote Yudkowsky: not the woke position]
+> This is *not* the woke position. The woke position is that when you call somebody "she" because she requested "she", you're validating her gender preference. I may SEPARATELY be happy to validate somebody's gender preference by using the more complex language feature of NOUN PHRASES to construct an actual SENTENCE that refers to her ON PURPOSE as a "woman", but when it comes to PRONOUNS I am not even validating anyone.
+
+Right; it's not the woke position. It's an _incoherent_ position that's optimized to concede to the woke the policy that they want for a _different stated reason_ in order to make the concession appear "neutral" and not "politically" motivated. (She requested "she" _because_ acceding to the request validates her gender preference!)
-Right. It's an _incoherent_ position that's optimized to concede to the woke the policy that they want for a _different stated reason_ in order to make the concession appear "neutral" and not politically motivated. But in order to _actually_ be neutral in your analysis, you need to _acknowledge_ the costs and benefits of a policy to different parties, and face the unhappy fact that sometimes there are cases where there _is_ no "neutral" policy, because all available policies impose costs on _someone_ and there's no solution that everyone is happy with. (Rational agents can hope to reach _some_ point on the Pareto frontier, but non-identical agents are necessarily going to fight about _which_ point, even if most of the fighting takes place in non-realized counterfactual possible worlds rather than exerting costs in reality.)
+In order to _actually_ be politically neutral in your analysis, you need to _acknowledge_ the costs and benefits of a policy to different parties, and face the unhappy fact that sometimes there are cases where there _is_ no "neutral" policy, because all available policies impose costs on _someone_ and there's no solution that everyone is happy with. (Rational agents can hope to reach _some_ point on the Pareto frontier, but non-identical agents are necessarily going to fight about _which_ point, even if most of the fighting takes place in non-realized counterfactual possible worlds rather than exerting costs in reality.)
Policy debates should not appear one-sided. Exerting social pressure on (for example) a native-English-speaking rape victim to refer to her male rapist with _she_/_her_ pronouns is a _cost_ to her. And, simultaneously, _not_ exerting that pressure is a _cost_ to many trans people, by making recognition of their social gender _conditional_ on some standard of good behavior, rather than an unconditional fact that doesn't need to be "earned" in any way.
At this point, some readers may be puzzled as to the _mood_ of the present post. I _agree_ with Yudkowsky's analysis of the design flaw in English's pronoun system. I _also_ agree that not misgendering trans people is a completely reasonable thing to do, which I also do. I'm _only_ disputing the part where Yudkowsky jumps to declaring his proposed "simplest and best protocol" without acknowledging the ways in which it's _not_ simple and not _unambiguously_ the best.
-Many observers would consider this a very minor disagreement, not something anyone would want to spend 12,000 words prosecuting with as much vitriolic rhetoric ("How dumb does he think we are", _&c._) as the target audience is likely to tolerate. If I agree with the problem statement (pronouns shouldn't denote sex, that's dumb; why would you define a language that way), and I don't disagree with the proposed policy solution (don't misgender trans people in public), why get so hung up on the exact arguments?
+Many observers would consider this a very minor disagreement, not something anyone would want to spend 12,000 words prosecuting with as much vitriolic rhetoric as the target audience is likely to tolerate. If I agree with the problem statement (pronouns shouldn't denote sex, that's dumb; why would you define a language that way), and I don't disagree with the proposed policy solution (don't misgender trans people in public), why get so hung up on the exact arguments?
(I mean, _besides_ [the fact that it's arguments that matter rather than conclusions, as a completely general principle of correct cognition](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line).)
I guess for me, the issue is that this is a question where _I need the correct reasoning in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions_. Let me explain.
-This debate looks very different depending on whether you're coming into it as someone being _told_ that you need to change your pronoun usage for the sake of someone who will be very hurt if you don't (in which case, refusing such a trivial request would seem petty and spiteful)—or whether you're in the position of wondering whether it makes sense to _make_ such a request of others.
+This debate looks very different depending on whether you're coming into it as someone being _told_ that you need to change your pronoun usage for the sake of someone who will be very hurt if you don't—or whether you're in the position of wondering whether it makes sense to _make_ such a request of others.
As a good cis ally, you're told that trans people know who they are and you need to respect that [on pain of being responsible for someone's suicide](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/). While politically convenient for people who have _already_ transitioned and don't want anyone second-guessing their identity, I think this view is actually false. Humans don't have an atomic "gender identity" that they just _know_, which has no particular properties other than it not being recognized by others being worse than death. Rather, there are a variety of reasons why someone might feel sad about being the sex that they are, and wish they could be the other sex instead, which is called "gender dysphoria."
------
-But if we can't take Yudkowsky's claims at face value, what's _actually_ going on here?
+[TODO outline of the section analyzing the political game here—]
+
+[If Yudkowsky's comments don't pass the laugh test, what's _actually_ going on here? When smart people act stupid, there's usually a reason—it's optimized stupidity, stupidity that acheives a goal]
+[We get a clue in the form of a DISCLAIMER comment https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228 ]
+> It unfortunately occurs to me that I must, in cases like these, disclaim that—to the extent there existed sensible opposing arguments against what I have just said—people might be reluctant to speak them in public, in the present social atmosphere. That is, in the logical counterfactual universe where I knew of very strong arguments against freedom of pronouns, I would have probably stayed silent on the issue, as would many other high-profile community members, and only Zack M. Davis would have said anything where you could hear it.
+>
+> This is a filter affecting your evidence; it has not to my own knowledge filtered out a giant valid counterargument that invalidates this whole post. I would have kept silent in that case, for to speak then would have been dishonest.
+>
+> Personally, I'm used to operating without the cognitive support of a civilization in controversial domains, and have some confidence in my own ability to independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter and check it myself before speaking. So you know, from having read this, that I checked all the speakable and unspeakable arguments I had thought of, and concluded that this speakable argument would be good on net to publish, as would not be the case if I knew of a stronger but unspeakable counterargument in favor of Gendered Pronouns For Everyone and Asking To Leave The System Is Lying.
+>
+> But the existence of a wide social filter like that should be kept in mind; to whatever quantitative extent you don't trust your ability plus my ability to think of valid counterarguments that might exist, as a Bayesian you should proportionally update in the direction of the unknown arguments you speculate might have been filtered out.
+[On the one hand, kudos to Yudkowsky for pointing out the filter. On the other hand, this claim to have "independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter" is _laughable_; my point about the appeal of the self-ID pronoun convention rests on the existing meanings of gendered pronouns, such that it's hypocritical to play dumb about there being existing meanings while defending the self-ID convention is really obvious. If you're persuaded by anything I've said in this post, you should quantitatively downgrade your trust in Yudkowsky]
> A clearer example of a forbidden counterargument would be something like e.g. imagine if there was a pair of experimental studies somehow proving that (a) everybody claiming to experience gender dysphoria was lying, and that (b) they then got more favorable treatment from the rest of society. We wouldn't be able to talk about that. No such study exists to the best of my own knowledge, and in this case we might well hear about it from the other side to whom this is the exact opposite of unspeakable; but that would be an example.
-Again, [Yudkowsky's pathological fixation on avoiding "lying"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly)
+[again, [Yudkowsky's pathological fixation on avoiding "lying"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly) is a distraction from anything that anyone actually cares about. Certainly, I don't believe (a) as stated. But something substantively _similar_ to (a), that self-reports are biased by social desirability and we can't take "gender identity" literally seems _overwhelmingly_ likely to be true, and I have a study to support it— /papers/blanchard-clemmensen-steiner-social_desirability_response_set_and_systematic_distortion.pdf . This should not seem implausible to someone who co-blogged with Robin Hanson for three years! As for (b), I don't think they get more favorable treatment from the rest of Society uniformly, but there absolutely _is_ an ideological subculture that encourages transition.
-"the other side"—interesting phrasing
+Can we talk about _that_? (Which is the stuff I actually care about, not pronouns)
+https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421986539228&reply_comment_id=10159424960909228
-> it is sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful to post your agreement with Stalin about things you actually agree with Stalin about, in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles, especially because people do *know* they're living in a half-Stalinist environment
+> now that we have a truth-bearing sentence, we can admit of the possibility of using our human superpower of language to *debate* whether this sentence is indeed true or false [...] Trying to pack all of that into the pronouns you'd have to use in step 1 is the wrong place to pack it.
+
+It's a hollow stalling tactic to say "Don't pack this into pronouns; let's use nouns to talk about the real issues, when you _motherfuckers_ have _no intention whatsoever_ of actually using the human superpower of language to debate the real issues!
+
+I was going to write a different multi-thousand word blog post, but I'm sick of Eliezer Yudkowsky fucking with me for years
-Trying to achieve a political objective "in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles"
+All of my heretical opinions are just _his_ opinions from the 'aughts; did he actually change his mind, or just he just think he can get away with pretending he didn't say it
-"A Rational Argument"
-"Super-Proton Things"
+nearest unblocked strategy
+4 levels of intellectual conversation https://rationalconspiracy.com/2017/01/03/four-layers-of-intellectual-conversation/
-[TODO:
- * Stalin and "A Rational Argument"
- * "If there were unspeakable arguments against, we couldn't talk about them"—okay, then you and your rationalists are frauds
- * I know none of this matters (If any professional alignment researchers wasting time reading this instead of figuring out how to save the world, get back to work!!), but one would have thought that the _general_ skills of correct argument would matter for saving the world.
+If we can't talk about that, then your rationality community is a _fraud_. If there's anything at all to your rationality stuff https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LqjKP255fPRY7aMzw/practical-advice-backed-by-deep-theories it should be _useful_ high-stakes pratical decisions that your community members need to make, like _whether or not to cut my dick off_. If we can't talk about the information I need to make an informed decision about that, then your rationalists are worse than useless. (Worse, because false claims to authority are more misleading than dead air.) You _motherfuckers_ need to rebrand, or disband, or be destroyed
+
+I know none of this matters (If any professional alignment researchers wasting time reading this instead of figuring out how to save the world, get back to work!!), but one would have thought that the _general_ skills of correct argument would matter for saving the world.
a rationality community that can't think about _practical_ issues that affect our day to day lives, but can get existential risk stuff right, is like asking for self-driving car software that can drive red cars but not blue cars
It's a _problem_ if public intellectuals in the current year need to pretend to be dumber than seven-year-olds in 2016
-nearest unblocked strategy and preview of "Hill of Validity in Defense"
-it's hollow to say, we should talk about the real issues with nouns, not grammar, if you have no intention whatsoever of talking about the real issues!—the reason TERFs go to the dark side and stop respecting pronouns is because they're sick of being fucked with
-I was going to write a different multi-thousand word blog post, but I'm sick of Eliezer Yudkowsky fucking with me for years
-]
+
+If you don't actually believe in the [common interest of many causes](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4PPE6D635iBcGPGRy/rationality-common-interest-of-many-causes) anymore, you could _say_ that—rebrand your thing as a more narrowly-scoped existential-risk-reduction cult, rather than falsely claiming to be about modeling-and-optimizing the world
+
+"We might well hear about it from the other side" is an interesting phrasing—almost admitting that you're a wholly owned subsidary of the Blue Tribe]
+
+> it is sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful to post your agreement with Stalin about things you actually agree with Stalin about, in ways that exhibit generally rationalist principles, especially because people do *know* they're living in a half-Stalinist environment
+
+> I don't see what the alternative is besides getting shot, or utter silence about everything Stalin has expressed an opinion on including "2 + 2 = 4" because if that logically counterfactually were wrong you would not be able to express an opposing opinion.
+
+[Summarize "A Rational Argument" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9f5EXt8KNNxTAihtZ/a-rational-argument
+You could imagine the campaign manager saying the same thing—"I don't see what the alternative is".]
+
+[Agreeing with Stalin that 2+2=4 is fine; the problem is a sustained pattern of _selectively_ bring up pro-Party points while ignoring anti-Party facts that would otherwise be relevant to the topic of interest, including stonewalling commenters who try to point out relevance]
+[Tweet said "I've never persuaded anyone to go trans" in light of his track record; is like thinking it's personally prudent and not community-harmful to bash Democrats and praise Republicans. If any possible good thing about Democrats is something you mention that "the other side" would say. Even if you can truthfully say "I've never _told_ anyone to _vote_ Republican", you shouldn't be surprised if people regard you as a Republican shill]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff