>
> —["The Lie" by Walter Raleigh](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/trb9HPWFk8Gy9MBdN/less-wrong-poetry-corner-walter-raleigh-s-the-lie)
-### Summary
+### Summary of Claims
* In a February 2021 Facebook post, Eliezer Yudkowsky inveighs against English's system of singular third-person pronouns: as a matter of clean language design, English's lack of a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun is a serious flaw: you shouldn't be required to commit to a stance on what sex someone is in order to say a grammatical sentence about her or him.
* **The "meaning" of language isn't some epiphenominal extraphysical fact that can be declared or ascertained separately from common usage.** The word "dog" means what it does _because_ English speakers use the word that way; if you wanted "dog" to mean something different, you'd need to change the way English speakers behave. Thus, **circularly redefining _he_ and _she_ as purportedly referring to pronoun preferences rather than sex doesn't work, if people are still in practice choosing pronouns on the basis of perceived sex.**
- * **Given that _she_ and _he_ do in fact convey sex category information to English speakers, some speakers might perceive an interest in resisting pressure to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.** This does _not_ constitute a philosophical committment that pronouns can be "lies."
+ * **Given that _she_ and _he_ do in fact convey sex category information to English speakers, some speakers might perceive an interest in resisting pressure to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.** This does _not_ constitute a philosophical committment that pronouns can be "lies" as such.
- * In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky seemingly denies that pronouns convey sex category information to native English speakers, claiming, "I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver' is attached to something in your head." Without alleging any conscious intent to deceive on Yudkowsky's part, **this self-report is not plausible, as evidenced by previous writings by Yudkowsky that treat sex and pronouns as synonymous.**
+ * In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky seemingly denies that pronouns convey sex category information to native English speakers, claiming, "I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver' is attached to something in your head." **This self-report is not plausible, as evidenced by previous writings by Yudkowsky that treat sex and pronouns as synonymous.**
* **I'm _not_ claiming that Yudkowsky should have a different pronoun usage policy.** I agree that misgendering all trans people "on principle" seems very wrong and unappealing. Rather, I'm claiming that [**policy debates should not appear one-sided**](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided); in order to be politically neutral in your analysis of why someone might choose one pronoun policy over another, you need to _acknowledge_ the costs and benefits of a policy to different parties. **It can simultaneously be the case that pressuring speakers to use pronouns at odds with their perceptions of sex is a cost to those speakers, _and_ that not exerting such pressure is a cost to trans people.** It's possible and desirable to be honest about that cost–benefit analysis, while ultimately choosing a policy that favors some parties' interests over others.
- * If I don't disagree with the ultimate policy decision of "don't misgender trans people", why am I putting so much effort in disputing Yudkowsky's reasoning in support of that policy? In addition to ["arguments matter, not conclusions" being a general principle of correct cognition](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line), it's because in this case, **I need the correct reasoning in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions.** People with gender dysphoria who are considering whether to transition need _factually accurate information_ about gender-transition interventions: if you have the facts wrong, you might wrongly avoid an intervention that would have benefitted you, or wrongly undergo an intevention that harms you. If it were _actually true_ that the simplest and best convention is that _he_ refers to the set of people who have asked us to use _he_, then asking for new pronouns despite not physically passing as the corresponding sex wouldn't be costly, but in fact, it is costly. Thus, **Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes me by spreading disinformation about the costs of asking for new pronouns; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth in this domain.**
+ * If I don't disagree with the ultimate policy decision of "don't misgender trans people", why am I putting so much effort in disputing Yudkowsky's reasoning in support of that policy? In addition to ["arguments matter, not conclusions" being a general principle of correct cognition](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line), it's because in this case, **I need the correct reasoning in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions.** People with gender dysphoria who are considering whether to transition need _factually accurate information_ about gender-transition interventions: if you have the facts wrong, you might wrongly avoid an intervention that would have benefitted you, or wrongly undergo an intevention that harms you. If it were _actually true_ that the simplest and best convention is that _he_ refers to the set of people who have asked us to use _he_, then asking for new pronouns despite not physically passing as the corresponding sex wouldn't be costly, but in fact, it is costly. Thus, **Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes me by spreading disinformation about the costs of asking for new pronouns; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth.**
<p class="flower-break">⁕ ⁕ ⁕</p>
In contrast, I think asking everyone in my life to use she/her pronouns for me would be an _obviously incredibly bad decision_. Because—notwithstanding my clean-shavenness and beautiful–beautiful ponytail and slight gynecomastia from that HRT experiment five years ago—anyone who looks at me can see at a glance that I'm male (as a _fact_ about the real world, however I feel about it). People would comply because they felt obligated to (and apologize profusely when they slipped up), but it wouldn't come naturally, and strangers would always get it wrong without being told—_in accordance with_ the "default for those-who-haven't-asked that goes by gamete size" clause of Yudkowsky's reform proposal, but really because pronouns are firmly attached to sex in their heads. The costs (this tremendous awkwardness and fakeness suffusing _all future social interactions involving me_) would exceed the benefits (I actually do feel happier about the word _she_).
-I used to trust Yudkowsky as an intellectual authority; his [Sequences](https://www.readthesequences.com/) from the late 'aughts were so life-alteringly great that I built up a trust that if Eliezer Yudkowsky said something, that thing was probably so, even if I didn't immediately understand why. But these days, Yudkowsky is telling me that 'she' normatively refers to the set of people who have asked us to use 'she', and that those who disagree are engaging in logically rude Shenanigans. However, as I have just explained at length, this is bullshit. (Declaring a "normative" meaning on your Facebook wall doesn't rewrite the _actual_ meaning encoded in the brains of 370 million English speakers.) If I were _dumb enough to believe him_, I might ask people for new pronouns, which would obviously be an incredibly bad decision. (It might be a _less_ bad decision if done in conjunction with a serious gender transition effort, but Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal doesn't _say_ "she" is the pronoun for fully-transitioned trans women; it just says you have to ask.) Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes more naïve versions of me by giving them bad information; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth in this domain.
+I used to trust Yudkowsky as an intellectual authority; his [Sequences](https://www.readthesequences.com/) from the late 'aughts were so life-alteringly great that I built up a trust that if Eliezer Yudkowsky said something, that thing was probably so, even if I didn't immediately understand why. But these days, Yudkowsky is telling me that 'she' normatively refers to the set of people who have asked us to use 'she', and that those who disagree are engaging in logically rude Shenanigans. However, as I have just explained at length, this is bullshit. (Declaring a "normative" meaning on your Facebook wall doesn't rewrite the _actual_ meaning encoded in the brains of 370 million English speakers.) If I were _dumb enough to believe him_, I might ask people for new pronouns, which would obviously be an incredibly bad decision. (It might be a _less_ bad decision if done in conjunction with a serious gender transition effort, but Yudkowsky's pronoun reform proposal doesn't _say_ "she" is the pronoun for fully-transitioned trans women; it just says you have to ask.) Yudkowsky is harming a reference class of people that includes more naïve versions of me by giving them bad information; I'm better off because I don't trust Eliezer Yudkowsky to tell the truth.
(I guess I [can't say I wasn't warned](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wustx45CPL5rZenuo/no-safe-defense-not-even-science).)
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