One could argue that the _tú_/_usted_ distinction is bad language design for the same reason Yudkowsky opposes the _she_/_he_ distinction: you shouldn't be forced to make a call on how familiar your relationship with someone is just in order to be able to use a pronoun for them. The modern English way is more flexible: you _can_ indicate formality if you want to by saying additional words, but it's not baked into the grammar itself.
-However, if you were going to reform Spanish (or some other language with the second-person formality distinction), you would probably abolish the distinction altogether, and just settle on one second-person singular pronoun. Indeed, that's what happened in English historically—the formal _you_ took over as the universal second-person pronoun, and the informal singular _thou_/_thee_/_thine_ has vanished from common usage. (People still recognize it as a second-person pronoun when encountered in old poetry—"The truth shall be thy warrant", _&c._—but most probably aren't aware of the formality distinction.) You wouldn't keep both forms, but circularly redefine them as referring only to the referent's preferred choice of address (?!). Similarly, when second-wave feminists objected to the convention of _Miss_ or _Mrs._ forcing speakers to take a stance on a woman's marital status, the response was [to popularize the marriage-agnostic alternative _Ms._](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.#Historical_development_and_revival_of_the_term), not to circularly redefine _Miss_ and _Mrs._
+However, if you were going to reform Spanish (or some other language with the second-person formality distinction), you would probably abolish the distinction altogether, and just settle on one second-person singular pronoun. Indeed, that's what happened in English historically—the formal _you_ took over as the universal second-person pronoun, and the informal singular _thou_/_thee_/_thine_ has vanished from common usage. (People still recognize it as a second-person pronoun when encountered in old poetry—"The truth shall be thy warrant", _&c._—but most probably aren't aware of the formality distinction.) You wouldn't keep both forms, but circularly redefine them as referring only to the referent's preferred choice of address (?!). Similarly, when second-wave feminists objected to the convention of _Miss_ or _Mrs._ forcing speakers to identify a woman's marital status, the response was [to popularize the marriage-agnostic alternative _Ms._](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.#Historical_development_and_revival_of_the_term), not to circularly redefine _Miss_ and _Mrs._
Really, the circular definition shouldn't satisfy _anyone_: people who want someone to call them _usted_ (or _tú_), do so _because_ of the difference in meaning and implied familiarity/respect, in the _existing_ (pre-reform) language. (Where else could such a preference possibly come from?) From an AI design standpoint, the circular redefinition can be seen as a form of ["wireheading"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aMXhaj6zZBgbTrfqA/a-definition-of-wireheading). You want people to respect you as a superior, and if they respected you as a superior, they'd call you _usted_. That could make a policy of coercing people into calling you _usted_ seem superficially appealing. But the appeal solely rests on confusing the pre-reform meaning (under which the choice of _usted_ implies respect and is therefore desirable) and the post-reform meaning (under which the choice implies nothing). Whether or not the proponent of the change consciously _notices_ the problem, the redefinition is _functionally_ "hypocritical": it's only desirable insofar as people aren't _actually_ using it internally.
> It is Shenanigans to try to bake your stance on how clustered things are and how appropriate it is to discretely cluster them using various criteria, _into the pronoun system of a language and interpretation convention that you insist everybody use!_
-There are a couple of problems with this. First of all, the "that you insist everybody use" part is kind of a [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO) in the current political environment around Yudkowsky's social sphere. A lot of the opposition to self-chosen pronouns is about opposition to _compelled speech_: people who don't think some trans person's transition should "count"—however cruel or capricious that might be—don't want to be coerced into legitimizing it with the pronoun choices in their _own_ speech. That's different from insisting that _others_ use sex-based non-subject-preferred pronouns, which is not something I see much of outside of gender-critical ("TERF") forums. Characterizing the issue as being about "freedom of pronouns", [as Yudkowsky does in the comment section](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228), elides the fact that freedom to specify how other people talk about you is in direct conflict with the freedom of speech of speakers. No matter which side of the conflict one supports, it seems wrong to characterize the self-ID pronoun side as being "pro-freedom", as if there wasn't any "freedom" concerns on the other side. [(Policy debates should not appear one-sided!)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided)
+There are a couple of problems with this. First of all, the "that you insist everybody use" part is kind of a [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO) in the current political environment around Yudkowsky's social sphere. A lot of the opposition to self-chosen pronouns is about opposition to _compelled speech_: people who don't think some trans person's transition should "count"—however cruel or capricious that might be—don't want to be coerced into legitimizing it with the pronoun choices in their _own_ speech. That's different from insisting that _others_ use sex-based non-subject-preferred pronouns, which is not something I see much of outside of gender-critical ("TERF") forums. Characterizing the issue as being about "freedom of pronouns", [as Yudkowsky does in the comment section](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228), elides the fact that freedom to specify how _other people_ talk about you is in direct conflict with the freedom of speech of speakers! No matter which side of the conflict one supports, it seems wrong to characterize the self-ID pronoun side as being "pro-freedom", as if there wasn't any "freedom" concerns on the other side. [(Policy debates should not appear one-sided!)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided)
-More importantly, however, in dicussing how to reform English, we're not actually in the position of defining a language from scratch. Even if you think the cultural evolution of English involved Shenanigans, it's not fair to attribute the Shenanigans to native speakers accurately describing their native language. Certainly, language can evolve; words can change meaning over time; if you can get the people in some community to start using language differently, then you have _ipso facto_ changed their language. But when we consider language as an information-processing system that we can reason about using our standard tools of probability and game theory, we see that in order to change the meaning associated with a word, you actually _do_ have to somehow get people to change their usage. You can _advocate_ for your new meaning and use it in your own speech, but you can't just _declare_ your preferred new meaning and claim that it applies to the language as actually spoken, without speakers actually changing their behavior. As a result, Yudkowsky's proposal "to say that this just _is_ the normative definition" doesn't work.
+More importantly, however, in discussing how to reform English, we're not actually in the position of defining a language from scratch. Even if you think the [cultural evolution](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/) of English involved Shenanigans, it's not fair to attribute the Shenanigans to native speakers accurately describing their native language. Certainly, language can evolve; words can change meaning over time; if you can get the people in some community to start using language differently, then you have _ipso facto_ changed their language. But when we consider language as an information-processing system that we can reason about using our standard tools of probability and game theory, we see that in order to change the meaning associated with a word, you actually _do_ have to somehow get people to change their usage. You can _advocate_ for your new meaning and use it in your own speech, but you can't just _declare_ your preferred new meaning and claim that it applies to the language as actually spoken, without speakers actually changing their behavior. As a result, Yudkowsky's proposal "to say that this just _is_ the normative definition" doesn't work.
To be clear, when I say that the proposal doesn't work, I'm not even saying I disagree with it. I mean that it literally, _factually_ doesn't work! Let me explain.
The "default for those-who-haven't-asked [going] by gamete size" part of Yudkowsky's proposal is _trying_ to deal with the backwards-compatibility problem by being backwards-compatible—prescribing the same behavior in the vast majority of cases—but in doing so, it fails to accomplish its stated purpose of de-gendering the language.
-To _actually_ de-gender English while keeping _she_ and _he_ (as contrasted to coordinating a jump to universal singular _they_, or _ve_), you'd need to _actually_ shatter the correlation between pronouns and sex/gender, such that a person's pronouns _were_ just an arbitrary extra piece of data that you couldn't deduce from their appearance and just needed to remember in the same way you have to remember people's names and can't deduce them from their appearances. But as far as I can tell, _no one_ wants this. When's the last time you heard someone you heard someone request pronouns for _non_-gender-related reasons? ("My pronouns are she/her—but note, that's _just_ because I prefer the aesthetics of how the pronouns sound; I'm _not_ in any way claiming that you should believe that I'm in any sense female, which isn't true.") Me neither.
+To _actually_ de-gender English while keeping _she_ and _he_ (as contrasted to coordinating a jump to universal singular _they_, or _ve_), you'd need to _actually_ shatter the correlation between pronouns and sex/gender, such that a person's pronouns _were_ just an arbitrary extra piece of data that you couldn't deduce from their appearance and just needed to remember in the same way you have to remember people's names and can't deduce them from their appearances. But as far as I can tell, _no one_ wants this. When's the last time you heard someone request pronouns for _non_-gender-related reasons? ("My pronouns are she/her—but note, that's _just_ because I prefer the aesthetics of how the pronouns sound; I'm _not_ in any way claiming that you should believe that I'm in any sense female, which isn't true.") Me neither.
-But given that pronouns _do_ convey sex-category information, as a _fact_ about how the brains of actually-existing English speakers _in fact_ process language (whether or not this means that English is terribly designed), some actually-existing English speakers might have reason to object when told to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.
+But given that pronouns _do_ convey sex-category information, as a _fact_ about how the brains of actually-existing English speakers _in fact_ process language (whether or not this means that English is terribly designed), some actually-existing English speakers might have reason to object when pressured to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.
-In an article titled ["Pronouns are Rohypnol"](https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/), Barra Kerr compares preferred pronouns to the famous [Stroop effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect). When color words are printed in text of a different color (_e.g._, <span style="color:blue;">red</span>, <span style="color:green">orange</span>, <span style="color:red">yellow</span>, <span style="color:purple">green</span>, <span style="color:orange">blue</span>, _&c._) and people are asked to name the color of the text, they're slow to respond: the meaning of the word interferes with our ability to name the color in front of our eyes.
+In an article titled ["Pronouns are Rohypnol"](https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/), Barra Kerr compares preferred pronouns to the famous [Stroop effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect). When color words are printed in text of a different color (_e.g._, <span style="color:blue;">red</span>, <span style="color:green">orange</span>, <span style="color:red">yellow</span>, <span style="color:purple">green</span>, <span style="color:orange">blue</span>, _&c._) and people are asked to name the color of the text, they're slow to respond: the meaning of the word interferes with their ability to name the color in front of our eyes.
-[TODO: Kerr suggests misgendering as an exercise]
+Kerr suggests that preferred pronouns have a similar effect, that "a conflict between what we see and know to be true, and what we are expected to say, affects us." As an exercise, she suggests (privately!) translating sentences about transgender people to use natal-sex-based pronouns.
-[TODO: Contrary to Yudkowskys' claims about lies, Kerr _isn't_ claiming that pronouns can be "lies"; the article is _very_ explicit about this; Yudkowsky is obviously completely unfamiliar with his opponents' arguments]
+Unfortunately, I don't have a study with objective measurements on hand (let me know in the comments if you do!), but I think most native English speakers who try this exercise and introspect—especially using examples where the trans person exhibits features or behavior typical of their natal sex—will agree with Kerr's assessment: "You can know perfectly the actual sex of a male person, and yet you will still react differently if someone calls them _she_ instead of _he_."
[TODO: let's related this to Yudkowsky's specialty multimodal neurons— both CLIP and biological neurons respond to text/images; typographic attacks are the same thing as pronoun badges; you would expect the people aligning language models to be able to think these thoughts]
-Given this multitude of reasons why the _existing_ meanings of _she_ and _he_ are relevant to the question of pronoun reform, what is Yudkowsky's response?
+Importantly, Kerr is _explicitly_ appealing to psychological effects of different pronoun conventions. She is absolutely _not_ claiming that the use of preferred pronouns is itself a "lie" about some testable proposition. She writes:
+
+> I've heard many people tell me they don't mind doing this, as a courtesy, although it takes some effort to keep up the mental gymnastics of perceiving one sex, but consistently using pronouns for the other. That's a personal choice, and I respect the reasons why some people make it.
+
+> I've also heard many people declaring that anyone who won't comply (usually directed at a woman) is obnoxious, mean, hostile, and unpleasant. 'Misgendering' is hate speech. They say.
+
+> But I refuse to use female pronouns for anyone male.
+
+Note the wording: "That's a personal choice", "_I_ refuse". She knows perfectly well that people who use gender-identity-based pronouns aren't making a false claim that trans men produce sperm, _&c._! Rather, she's saying that a pronoun convention that groups together females, and a minority of males who wish they were female, affects our cognition about that minority of males in a way that's disadvantageous to Kerr's interests (because she wants to be especially alert to threats posed by males), such that Kerr refuses to comply with that convention in her own speech. (Compare to how a Spanish speaker might refuse to address someone they disrespected as _usted_ because of its connotations, without thereby claiming that using _usted_ would make the sentence literally false.)
+
+I take pains to emphasize this because Yudkowsky [misrepresents what his political opponents are claiming](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/), repeatedly trying to frame the matter of dispute as to whether pronouns can be "lies" (to which Yudkowsky says, No, that would be ontologically confused)—whereas if you _actually read_ what the people on the other side of the policy debate are saying, they're largely _not claiming_ that "pronouns are lies"! (It seems fair to regard Kerr's article as representative of gender-critical ("TERF") concerns; I've seen the post linked in those circles more than once, and it's cited in [embattled former University of Sussex professor Kathleen Stock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock#Views_on_gender_self-identification)'s book _Material Girls_.)
+
+Anyway, given these reasons why the _existing_ meanings of _she_ and _he_ are relevant to the question of pronoun reform, what is Yudkowsky's response?
Apparently, to play dumb. In the comments of the Facebook post, Yudkowsky claims:
...
-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. 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 more firmly than a proper name is attached to someone's appearance.
+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, [it's common for little untruths and distortions to slip into one's speech](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pZSpbxPrftSndTdSf/honesty-beyond-internal-truth).) 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 more firmly than a proper name is attached to someone's appearance.
+
+I realize this must seem impossibly rude and presumptuous of me. Yudkowsky _said_ he doesn't know what it feels like from the inside! That's a report out his own mental state, which he has privileged introspective access to, and I don't! What grounds could I possibly, _possibly_ have to think he's not telling the truth about his own mind?
-[TODO: how could you possibly know that?]
+It's a good question. And my answer is, even without mind-reading technology, people's minds are still part of the same cause-and-effect physical universe that I can (must) make probabilistic inferences about, and verbal self-reports aren't my _only_ source of evidence about someone's mind. In particular, if someone's verbal self-report mis-predicts what we know about their _behavior_, it's far from clear that we should trust the report more than our senses.
The thing is, Eliezer Yudkowsky is a native English speaker born in 1979. As a native English speaker born in 1987, I have a _pretty good_ mental model of how native English speakers born in the late 20th century use language.
And one of the things native English speakers born in the late 20th century are _very good_ at doing, is noticing what sex people are and using the corresponding pronouns without consciously thinking about it, because the pronouns are attached to the concept of sex in their heads more firmly than proper names are attached to something in their heads.
+I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_. Moreover, we can say something about the cognitive algorithm underlying _how_ they do this: [people can recognize sex from facial structure _alone_ (hair covered, males clean-shaven) at 96% accuracy](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf)
-I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_.
+
+I would also bet at very generous odds that in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has very rarely if ever assumed what someone's name is on the basis of their appearance without being told.
> In terms of important things? Those would be all the things I've read—from friends, from strangers on the Internet, above all from human beings who are people—describing reasons someone does not like to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate, or perhaps at all.
-[TODO: self-identity is a Schelling point]
+Okay, so Yudkowsky
+[TODO: self-identity is a Schelling point]
+appeal to inner privacy conversation-halter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wqmmv6NraYv4Xoeyj/conversation-halters
[OUTLINE of remainder—
* "It can't be based on feelings"—hypocrisy, the only reason we're talking about this at all is because of genderspecial people's feelings, as explicitly acknowledged in the OP!!!
* "Can't imagine a sympathetic protagonist"—lies, imagine a rape victim
* "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, but one would have thought that the _general_ skills of correct argument would matter for saving the world ... right? / brief recap of my Whole Dumb Story, need the correct answer in order to decide
+ * 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.
somewhere—
* Douglas Hofstader also made fun of gendered pronouns with his "Person Paper"—but notice that he didn't even consider the self-chosen criterion!!
• typographic attacks https://openai.com/blog/multimodal-neurons/
• singular
+
https://www.ehu.eus/seg/_media/gizt/5/5/brown-gilman-pronouns.pdf
> In terms of important things? Those would be all the things I've read - from friends, from strangers on the Internet, above all from human beings who are people - describing reasons someone does not like to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate, or perhaps at all.
https://www.genderdissent.com/the-resistance-column
https://www.womenarehuman.com/extra-jail-time-for-incarcerated-women-who-use-male-pronouns-for-male-transgender-identifying-inmates/
+
+Spanish speakers screw up he/she—because they're used to dropping pronouns! https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2017/papers/0639/paper0639.pdf
+
+a rationality community that can't think about this stuff, but can get existential risk stuff right, is like asking for self-driving car software that can drive red cars but not blue cars
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff