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[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / content / drafts / dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes-or-why-i-dont-care-about-your-feelings.md

diff --git a/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes-or-why-i-dont-care-about-your-feelings.md b/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes-or-why-i-dont-care-about-your-feelings.md
index 3c43d04..b54e8b1 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes-or-why-i-dont-care-about-your-feelings.md
+++ b/content/drafts/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes-or-why-i-dont-care-about-your-feelings.md
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ New ideas are constantly being invented and talked about in the world; some of t
 
 True or useful ideas certainly have a selective advantage insofar as humans care about usefulness (I'm going to go out on a limb and just say outright that humans don't care about truth), but there can be other features of an idea that convey a selective advantage in memetic competition; for example, an appeal to alleged consequences of accepting the idea. This is the reason so many religions prominently feature promises and threats of divine reward or punishment: "Believe X and you'll be rewarded; believe not-X and you'll be sorry" is _more memetically fit_ than "It happens to be the case that X, but this has no particular further implications," because the former creates incentives for propogating itself that the latter does not. It doesn't _matter_ that the rewards and punishments don't actually exist—
 
-(at least, _I_ don't think they exist, because I am not a carrier of the religion-X meme)
+(at least, _I_ don't think they exist, because I am not a carrier of the X religion meme)
 
 —a human in the grips of the idea will still be genuinely terrified of the punishment. The forces of memetic evolution don't care about the human's fear and suffering, because _the forces of memetic evolution_ is just our name for the observation that ideas that are better at being replicated, are better at being replicated; it's not an agent that can care about _anything_.
 
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ It didn't feel like I was talking to a _person_ at all.
 
 It _felt like_ I was talking to an AI designed to maximize the number of trans people.
 
-Obviously I'm totally in favor of trans _people_ having access to the hormones and surgeries that they want, and having their preferred pronouns respected. But if Brian is a representative example of what the _subculture of trans activism_ does to people's heads, then maybe your _shitty delusional subculture deserves to die_.
+Obviously I'm totally in favor of trans _people_ having access to the hormones and surgeries that they want, and having their preferred pronouns respected. But if Kevin is a representative example of what the _subculture of trans activism_ does to people's heads, then maybe your _shitty delusional subculture deserves to die_.
 
 I understand that for people who have _already_ built up a self-image around the idea that they are literally women and always have been, the idea that their female gender identity arose out of a misinterpretation of misdirected male sexuality could be extremely disturbing.