>
> —["Dane-Geld"](http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html) by Rudyard Kipling
-There's this slogan meant to illustrate a principle in game theory: "Don't negotiate with terrorists." Imagine you're a political leader and terrorists have taken some of your citizens hostage and promise to release them if you meet their demands. You should refuse the deal, the argument goes, no matter how much you desperately want your people back safe, because agreeing would create an incentive for the terrorists to take more hostages; if you're the kind of agent that pays ransoms, blackmailing you is a reliable profit opportunity.
+There's this slogan meant to illustrate a principle in game theory: "Don't negotiate with terrorists." Imagine you're a political leader and terrorists have taken some of your citizens hostage and promise to release them if you meet their demands. You should refuse the deal, the argument goes, no matter how much you desperately want your people back safe, because agreeing would create an incentive for the terrorists to take more hostages: if you're the kind of agent that pays ransoms, blackmailing you is a reliable profit opportunity.
+
+----
New ideas are constantly being invented and talked about in the world; some of them catch on, and spread, and spawn entire subcultures and political movements. Given that ideas vary, replicate themselves (from mind to mind, by means of speech or writing), and moreover, _aren't equally good_ at replicating themselves, it can be useful to [think of the spread of ideas as an _evolutionary_ process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics): the winning ideas are not necessarily the ones that are true or useful, but rather the ones that are _better at replicating themselves_.
And of course, there are lots of other, subtler non-truth-tracking, non-usefulness-tracking features of an idea that could make it more memetically fit.
-Here's one: "You are a member of marginalized identity group Y; anyone who notices facts that could be construed to call this narrative into question is thereby hurting you by [invalidating your identity](http://unremediatedgender.space/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/)."
+Here's one: "You are a member of marginalized identity group Y; anyone who notices facts that could be construed to call this narrative into question is thereby hurting you by [invalidating your identity](/2016/Sep/psychology-is-about-invalidating-peoples-identities/)."
A human who has accepted—who has been _taken hostage by_—this idea, will feel genuine pain and distress whenever anyone notices facts that could be construed to call the narrative into question. And so the human's friends, who love and care about them, will dutifully make sure to _pretend not to notice_ any inconvenient facts, and socially punish anyone who doesn't _pretend not to notice_, in order to avoid hurting their friend.
There's a word in the psychology literature for the beautiful feeling at the center of my life: _autogynephilia_ ("love of oneself as a woman"), coined in the context of a theory that it represented one of two distinct etiologies for male-to-female transsexualism. This theory didn't seem to be the standard mainstream view, and, I learned, people get really mad at you when you mention it in a comment section, so for a long time I self-identified with the _word_ "autogynephilia", but assumed that the associated _theory_ was false. _I_ wasn't one of those people who were _actually trans_; I was just, you know, one of those guys who is pointedly insistent on not being _proud_ of the fact that they're guys. (And who dimly suspects that this is somehow causually related to [...])
-Recent life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That in fact, my story till now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" part](http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I still think I'm smarter than that).
+Recent life events led me to do some reading—Kay Brown's blog [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), Anne Lawrence's [_Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism_](http://www.annelawrence.com/mtimb.html), and Imogen Binnie's novel [_Nevada_](http://haveyoureadnevada.com/) (this item is reverse-scored)—and I concluded that, no, wait, actually the theory looks _correct_, and I _do_ have the same underlying psychological condition that leads people to transition. That in fact, my story till now may even be _typical_ of people who transition in their thirties, right up to the ["Oh, I just want to _experiment_ with hormones, I'm not actually going to _transition_" phase](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) (although I still think I'm smarter than that).
This is _really important information_! This is _not_ the thing someone should have to piece together themselves at age 28. This is the sort of thing that should just be in the standard sex-ed books, that boys having these kinds of feelings can read at age 15 and immediately say, "Ah, I'm in the same taxon as lesbian trans women, and heterosexual crossdressers, and guys who have these fantasies but don't do anything about them in particular, and bigender people who are on low-dose hormones and choose how to 'present' in different social venues; I wonder which of these strategies is best for me given my exact circumstances?"
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.
-I'm happy to shut up about, um, enpvny qvssreraprf va VD, but this, _this_ is _personal_
+I'm happy to shut up about, um, rguavp VD qvssreraprf univat n fvmnoyr trargvp pbzcbarag, but this, _this_ is _personal_.
But people dealing with gender dysphoria who haven't already transitioned deserve accurate information! This is _personal_ to me. If being a good person means submitting to social pressure aimed at getting me to _shut up and stop thinking_ about the true nature of the beautiful feeling at the center of my life for _twenty-five fucking years_ (!?), then I have _no interest_ in being a good person.
I'm certainly not _trying_ to say things that will hurt people—_least_ of all people who are mostly just like me but read different books in a different order and are living out a pretty decent approximation of _my wildest fantasy_.
-But if you try _not_ to say things that will hurt people, you end up conceding the entire future history of world to people on the basis of their being colonized by mind-viruses that make them the _easiest to hurt_.
+But if you try _not_ to say things that will hurt people, [you](https://devinhelton.com/2015/03/23/standing-up-to-offense-bullying/) [end](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/22/ot9-the-thread-pirate-roberts/#comment-160689) [up](http://lesswrong.com/lw/59i/offense_versus_harm_minimization/3y0k) conceding the entire future history of world to people on the basis of their being colonized by mind-viruses that make them the _easiest to hurt_.
I don't want to live in that world.
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff