Looking back with the outlook later acquired from my robot cult, this is _abhorrent_. You don't _casually wish death_ on someone just because you disagree with their views on psychology! (Also, casually wishing death on a woman for her views does not seem particularly pro-feminist?!) Even if it wasn't in a spirit of personal malice (this was a song I sung to myself, not an actual threat directed to Amy Alkon's inbox), the sentiment just _isn't done_. But at the time, I _didn't notice there was anything wrong with my song_. I hadn't yet been socialized into the refined ethos of "False ideas should be argued with, but heed that we too may have ideas that are false".
-In the same vein of my not then understanding the difference between argument and demonizing the outgroup, there was one especially memorable occasion in the _Overcoming Bias_ comment section when [the soon-to-be-President of Yudkowsky's research nonprofit brought up the idea of banning me](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267438) after [I said](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267387), "are you aware that this is exactly the sort of psychology that leads to rape?" in response to [another commenter's anecdote](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267368) that I construed as misogynistic. Coincidentally, this was actually the _same_ day as my first time ever crossdressing in front of other people (I having purchased a purple dress on Amazon and invited two friends over while my parents were away), only I couldn't enjoy it at all because I was so emotionally trashed from the ban threat.
+In the same vein of my not then understanding the difference between argument and demonizing the outgroup, there was one especially memorable occasion in the _Overcoming Bias_ comment section when [the soon-to-be President of Yudkowsky's research nonprofit brought up the idea of banning me](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267438) after [I said](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267387), "are you aware that this is exactly the sort of psychology that leads to rape?" in response to [another commenter's anecdote](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/why-do-psychopa.html#comment-518267368) that I construed as misogynistic. Coincidentally, this was actually the _same_ day as my first time ever crossdressing in front of other people (I having purchased a purple dress on Amazon and invited two friends over while my parents were away), only I couldn't enjoy it at all because I was so emotionally trashed from the ban threat.
Sex differences would come up a couple more times in one of the last Sequences, on ["Fun Theory"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4aGvLnHvYgX9pZHS/the-fun-theory-sequence)—speculations on how life could be truly _good_ if the world were superintelligently optimized for human values, in contrast to the cruelty and tragedy of our precarious existence [in a world shaped only by blind evolutionary forces](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sYgv4eYH82JEsTD34/beyond-the-reach-of-god).
In that case, if I have to choose ... I _don't_ think I want to be Actually Female? I _like_ who I am on the inside, and don't need to change it. I don't _want_ to stop loving challenges and points—or women!—in the way that I do. And if I don't know enough neuroscience to have an _informed_ preference about the ratio of gray to white matter in my posterior lateral orbitofrontal cortex, I'm sure it's _probably fine_.
-At the same time, the idea of having a female body still seems like _the most appealing thing in the world_. If artificial superintelligence gives me BodyApp to play with for a subjective year and tiles the _rest_ of our future lightcone with paperclips, that's _fine_; I will die _happy_.
+At the same time, the idea of having a female body still seems like _the most appealing thing in the world_. If artificial superintelligence gives me BodyApp to play with for a subjective year and [tiles the _rest_ of our future lightcone with paperclips](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer), that's _fine_; I will die _happy_.
So, I guess ...
At the same time, while reflecting on one's own values and how to refine them in response to new information and new situations, the question of what your genetic analogue raised in a different culture would think ... seems like _relevant and informative_ information?
-When I introspect on the _causes_ of my whole gender ... _thing_, I see three parents in the causal graph: autogynephilia, being a sensitive boy rather than a macho guy, and my ideological commitment to antisexism (wanting to treat feminism as a religion, as a special case of egalitarianism as our state religion). The first two things seem likely to be more "innate", more robust to perturbations—but the the ideology thing mostly seems like a _mistake_ insofar as it's committed to making bad predictions about human psychology—albeit a beautiful mistake that I formed my values in the context of—and the process of figuring out how to do better would benefit from looking at the space of _other_ possible mistakes.
+When I introspect on the _causes_ of my whole gender ... _thing_, I see three parents in the causal graph: autogynephilia, being a sensitive boy rather than a macho guy, and my ideological commitment to antisexism (wanting to treat feminism as a religion, as a special case of egalitarianism as our state religion). The first two things seem likely to be more "innate", more robust to perturbations—but the the ideology thing mostly seems like a _mistake_ insofar as it's committed to making bad predictions about human psychology—and the process of figuring out how to do better would benefit from looking at the space of _other_ possible mistakes.
["Anyone who gives a part of themselves to a[n ideology] discovers a sense of beauty in it."](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LRKXuxLrnxx3nSESv/should-ethicists-be-inside-or-outside-a-profession) When figuring out how to [rescue the spirit](https://arbital.greaterwrong.com/p/rescue_utility) of early-twenty-first century (pre-[Great Awokening](https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020)) egalitarian individualism in light of the terrible discovery that [_none of this shit is true_](/2020/Apr/book-review-human-diversity/), it's instructive to consider how you would have formulated your values, if you had always known the true state of affairs to begin with (even if, as a point of historical fact, your mistaken beliefs had a causal role in the development of the values you're trying to rescue).
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff