Schelling points are "sticky." If the set of possible choices is ordered, and it's possible to "move" from a currently-selected choice towards a "nearby" one, then the selected option may [slide down a "slippery slope" until stopping at a Schelling point](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes). Imagine the armies of two countries fighting over contested territory containing a river. The river is a Schelling point for the border between the two countries—unless one of the armies has a military advantage to push the battle line forward to the _next_ Schelling point, we expect peace-treaty negotiations to settle on the river as the border. There's no particular reason that the border couldn't be drawn 2 kilometers north of the river, _except_ that that would invite the question of, "Why 2 kilometers? Why not 1, or 3?"
-The coordination problem of _who_ has the authority to decide what "gender" a person is, can be seen of a particular case of the problem of how to decide what gender a person is _in a particular context_. The notion of the same person's "gender" being differnt in different contexts may seem strange, but again, in the absence of magical perfect sex-change technology, we _kind of_ need it: as far as the practice of medicine is concerned, there's no getting around the fact that pregnant trans men are female. (Even if the doctors _address_ the patient as "Mr.", "he", _&c._ they still need to draw on their knowledge of the _female_ reproductive system to practice their craft, and they might need _language_ that reflects what they're actually thinking.)
+The coordination problem of _who_ has the authority to decide what "gender" a person is, can be seen of a particular case of the problem of how to decide what gender a person is _in a particular context_. The notion of the same person's "gender" being different in different contexts may seem strange, but again, in the absence of magical perfect sex-change technology, we _kind of_ need it: as far as the practice of medicine is concerned, for example, there's no getting around the fact that pregnant trans men are female. (Even if the doctors _address_ the patient as "Mr.", "he", _&c._ they still need to draw on their mental models of the human _female_ body to practice their craft, and in the course of that practice, they might need _language_ that reflects what they're actually thinking.)
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projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff