Sunday drafting "Sexual Dimorphism" (session 1)

[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / content / drafts / sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md

diff --git a/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md b/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
index 2c72da5..2cf7637 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
+++ b/content/drafts/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Title: Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to My Gender Problems
 Date: 2021-02-14 05:00
 Category: commentary
 Title: Sexual Dimorphism in Yudkowsky's Sequences, in Relation to My Gender Problems
 Date: 2021-02-14 05:00
 Category: commentary

-Tags: autogynephilia, bullet-biting, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, epistemic horror, my robot cult, personal, sex differences, Star Trek, Julia Serano
+Tags: autogynephilia, bullet-biting, cathartic, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, epistemic horror, my robot cult, personal, sex differences, Star Trek, Julia Serano

 Status: draft
 
 > _I'll write my way out  
 Status: draft
 
 > _I'll write my way out  


@@ -126,9 +126,13 @@ If you're willing to admit to the possibility of psychological sex differences _
 
 I guess if you _didn't_ grow up with a quasi-religious fervor for psychological sex differences denialism, this whole theoretical line of argument about evolutionary psychology doesn't seem world-shatteringly impactful?—maybe it just looks like supplementary Science Details brushed over some basic facts of human existence that everyone knows. But if you _have_ built your identity around [quasi-religious _denial_](/2020/Apr/peering-through-reverent-fingers/) of certain basic facts of human existence that everyone knows (if not everyone [knows that they know](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief)), getting forced out of it by sufficient weight of Science Details [can be a pretty rough experience](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/XM9SwdBGn8ATf8kq3/c/comment/Zv5mrMThBkkjDAqv9).
 
 
 I guess if you _didn't_ grow up with a quasi-religious fervor for psychological sex differences denialism, this whole theoretical line of argument about evolutionary psychology doesn't seem world-shatteringly impactful?—maybe it just looks like supplementary Science Details brushed over some basic facts of human existence that everyone knows. But if you _have_ built your identity around [quasi-religious _denial_](/2020/Apr/peering-through-reverent-fingers/) of certain basic facts of human existence that everyone knows (if not everyone [knows that they know](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief)), getting forced out of it by sufficient weight of Science Details [can be a pretty rough experience](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/XM9SwdBGn8ATf8kq3/c/comment/Zv5mrMThBkkjDAqv9).
 

-My hair-trigger antisexism was sort of lurking in the background of some of my comments while the Sequences were being published (though, again, it wasn't relevant to _most_ posts, which were just about cool math and science stuff that had no avenue for being corrupted by gender politics). The term "social justice warrior" wasn't yet popular, but there were definitely some SJW-like patterns in my comments, inherited from my time in the feminist blogosphere.
+My hair-trigger antisexism was sort of lurking in the background of some of my comments while the Sequences were being published (though, again, it wasn't relevant to _most_ posts, which were just about cool math and science stuff that had no avenue whatsoever for being corrupted by gender politics). The term "social justice warrior" wasn't yet popular, but there were definitely some SJW-like patterns in my comments, inherited from my time in the feminist blogosphere.

 
 

-[TODO: finish bridge paragraphs/section ... this denial was in the background in "The Opposite Sex", and the metaethics sequence, Yud on "men should think of themselves as men";
+[TODO:
+
+* Amy Alkon song
+
+finish bridge paragraphs/section ... this denial was in the background in "The Opposite Sex", and the metaethics sequence, Yud on "men should think of themselves as men";

 
 I'm feeling really averse to writing this part because it hurts—
 
 
 I'm feeling really averse to writing this part because it hurts—
 


@@ -352,7 +356,7 @@ For all that my penis is boring at best and annoying at worst, it _works_. The o
 
 Did you know that trans women [have to dilate their neovagina after bottom surgery](https://www.mtfsurgery.net/dilation.htm)? Yeah. There are these hard tubes of various widths, and you're supposed to stick them up there multiple times a day after surgery (and weekly indefinitely) to prevent the cavity from losing depth. I'm told that there are important technical reasons why it would be objectively wrong to use the phrase _open wound_ in this situation, but the body doesn't know the important technical reasons and you still need to dilate.
 
 
 Did you know that trans women [have to dilate their neovagina after bottom surgery](https://www.mtfsurgery.net/dilation.htm)? Yeah. There are these hard tubes of various widths, and you're supposed to stick them up there multiple times a day after surgery (and weekly indefinitely) to prevent the cavity from losing depth. I'm told that there are important technical reasons why it would be objectively wrong to use the phrase _open wound_ in this situation, but the body doesn't know the important technical reasons and you still need to dilate.
 

-I am glad that these interventions _exist_ for the people who are brave and desperate enough to need them. But given that I'm not that desperate and not that brave, would it not be wiser to trust the proverb and not look a gift man in the mouth?
+I am glad that these interventions _exist_ for the people who are brave and desperate enough to need them. But given that I'm not that desperate and not that brave, would it not be wiser to trust the paraphrased proverb and not look a gift man in the mouth?

 
 My beautiful–beautiful ponytail was a _smart move_ (and hair length isn't sexually dimorphic anyway; it's only our culture's sexism that makes it seem relevant in this context).
 
 
 My beautiful–beautiful ponytail was a _smart move_ (and hair length isn't sexually dimorphic anyway; it's only our culture's sexism that makes it seem relevant in this context).
 


@@ -392,7 +396,7 @@ In everyday life, we're almost never in doubt as to which entities we want to co
 
 People _do_ change a lot over time; there _is_ a sense in which, in some contexts, we _don't_ want to say that a sixty-year-old is the "same person" they were when they were twenty—and forty years is "only" 4,870 three-day increments. But if a twenty-year-old were to be magically replaced with their sixty-year-old future self (not just superficially wearing an older body like a suit of clothing, but their brain actually encoding forty more years of experience and decay) ... well, there's a reason I reached for the word "replace" (suggesting putting a _different_ thing in something's place) when describing the scenario. That's what Yudkowsky means by "the change is too sharp"—the _ordinary_ sense in which we model people as the "same person" from day to day (despite people having [more than one proton](/2019/Dec/on-the-argumentative-form-super-proton-things-tend-to-come-in-varieties/) in a different place from day to day) has an implicit [Lipschitz condition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipschitz_continuity) buried in it, an assumption that people don't change _too fast_.
 
 
 People _do_ change a lot over time; there _is_ a sense in which, in some contexts, we _don't_ want to say that a sixty-year-old is the "same person" they were when they were twenty—and forty years is "only" 4,870 three-day increments. But if a twenty-year-old were to be magically replaced with their sixty-year-old future self (not just superficially wearing an older body like a suit of clothing, but their brain actually encoding forty more years of experience and decay) ... well, there's a reason I reached for the word "replace" (suggesting putting a _different_ thing in something's place) when describing the scenario. That's what Yudkowsky means by "the change is too sharp"—the _ordinary_ sense in which we model people as the "same person" from day to day (despite people having [more than one proton](/2019/Dec/on-the-argumentative-form-super-proton-things-tend-to-come-in-varieties/) in a different place from day to day) has an implicit [Lipschitz condition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipschitz_continuity) buried in it, an assumption that people don't change _too fast_.
 

-The thing about Sorites problems is that they're _incredibly boring_. The map is not the territory. The distribution of sand-configurations we face in everyday life is such that we usually have an answer as to whether the sand "is a heap" or "is not a heap", but in the edge-cases where we're not sure, arguing about whether to use the word "heap" _doesn't change the configuration of sand_. You might think that if [the category is blurry](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray), you therefore have some freedom to [draw its boundaries](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary) the way you prefer—but [the cognitive function of the category is for making probabilistic inferences on the basis of category-membership](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries), and those probabilistic inferences can be quantitatively better or worse. Preferences over concept definitions that aren't about maximizing predictive accuracy are therefore preferences _for deception_, because "making probability distributions less accurate in order to achieve some other goal" is exactly what _deception_ means.
+The thing about Sorites problems is that they're _incredibly boring_. The map is not the territory. The distribution of sand-configurations we face in everyday life is such that we usually have an answer as to whether the sand "is a heap" or "is not a heap", but in the edge-cases where we're not sure, arguing about whether to use the word "heap" _doesn't change the configuration of sand_. You might think that if [the category is blurry](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray), you therefore have some freedom to [draw its boundaries](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d5NyJ2Lf6N22AD9PB/where-to-draw-the-boundary) the way you prefer—but [the cognitive function of the category is for making probabilistic inferences on the basis of category-membership](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/esRZaPXSHgWzyB2NL/where-to-draw-the-boundaries), and those probabilistic inferences can be quantitatively better or worse. [Preferences over concept definitions that aren't about maximizing predictive accuracy are therefore preferences _for deception_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/onwgTH6n8wxRSo2BJ/unnatural-categories-are-optimized-for-deception), because "making probability distributions less accurate in order to achieve some other goal" is exactly what _deception_ means.

 
 That's why defining your personal identity to get the answer you want is cheating. If the answer you wanted was actually _true_, you could just say so without needing to _want_ it.
 
 
 That's why defining your personal identity to get the answer you want is cheating. If the answer you wanted was actually _true_, you could just say so without needing to _want_ it.
 


@@ -448,11 +452,13 @@ A month later, I moved out of my mom's house in [Walnut Creek](https://en.wikipe
 
 (I would later change my mind about which side of the tunnel is the correct one.)
 
 
 (I would later change my mind about which side of the tunnel is the correct one.)
 

-In Berkeley, I met a number of really interesting people who seemed quite similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life! (I see where the pattern-matching facilities in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% from.) This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_, but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)
+In Berkeley, I met a number of really interesting people who seemed quite similar to me along a lot of dimensions, but also very different along some other dimensions having to do with how they were currently living their life! (I see where the pattern-matching facilities in Yudkowsky's brain got that 20% figure from.) This prompted me to do a little bit more reading in some corners of the literature that I had certainly _heard of_, but hadn't already mastered and taken seriously in the previous twelve years of reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych. (Kay Brown's blog, [_On the Science of Changing Sex_](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/), was especially helpful.)

 
 Between the reading, and a series of increasingly frustrating private conversations, I gradually became persuaded that Blanchard _wasn't_ dumb and wrong, that his taxonomy is _basically_ correct, at least as a first approximation. So far this post has just been about _my_ experience, and not anyone's theory of transsexualism (which I had assumed for years couldn't possibly apply to me), so let me take a moment to explain the theory now.
 
 
 Between the reading, and a series of increasingly frustrating private conversations, I gradually became persuaded that Blanchard _wasn't_ dumb and wrong, that his taxonomy is _basically_ correct, at least as a first approximation. So far this post has just been about _my_ experience, and not anyone's theory of transsexualism (which I had assumed for years couldn't possibly apply to me), so let me take a moment to explain the theory now.
 

-(With the understanding that psychology is complicated and there's more to be said about what "as a first approximation" is even supposed to mean, but I need a few paragraphs to talk about the _simple_ version of the theory that makes _pretty good_ predictions on _average_, before I can elaborate on more complicated theories that might make even better predictions including on cases that diverge from average.)
+(With the caveated understanding that psychology is complicated and there's more to be said about what "as a first approximation" is even supposed to mean, but I need a few paragraphs to talk about the _simple_ version of the theory that makes _pretty good_ predictions on _average_, before I can elaborate on more complicated theories that might make even better predictions including on cases that diverge from average.)
+
+(And with the caveated understanding that [pinning down the specific causal relationships is a much harder scientific feat](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) than merely showcasing observations that cast doubt on the "internal sense of their own gender does not match their assigned sex at birth" story.)

 
 The idea is that male-to-female transsexualism isn't actually one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't actually have anything to do with each other, except for the (perhaps) indicated treatment of HRT, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different bacterial or viral diseases might happen to respond to the same drug.)
 
 
 The idea is that male-to-female transsexualism isn't actually one phenomenon; it's two completely different phenomena that don't actually have anything to do with each other, except for the (perhaps) indicated treatment of HRT, surgery, and social transition. (Compare to how different bacterial or viral diseases might happen to respond to the same drug.)
 


@@ -460,7 +466,7 @@ In one taxon, the "early-onset" type, you have same-sex-attracted males who have
 
 That story is pretty intuitive. Were an alien AI to be informed of the fact that, among humans, some fraction of males elect to undergo medical interventions to resememble females and aspire to be perceived as females socially, "brain-intersex condition such that they already behave like females" would probably be its top hypothesis for the cause of such behavior, just on priors.
 
 
 That story is pretty intuitive. Were an alien AI to be informed of the fact that, among humans, some fraction of males elect to undergo medical interventions to resememble females and aspire to be perceived as females socially, "brain-intersex condition such that they already behave like females" would probably be its top hypothesis for the cause of such behavior, just on priors.
 

-Suppose our alien AI were to be informed that many of the human males seeking to become female (as far as the technology can manage, anyway) do _not_ fit the clinical profile of the early-onset type. If you [didn't have enough data to _prove_ anything, but you had to guess](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xTyuQ3cgsPjifr7oj/faster-than-science), what would be your _second_ hypothesis for how this behavior might arise?
+Suppose our alien AI were to be informed that many of the human males seeking to become female (as far as the technology can manage, anyway) do _not_ fit the clinical profile of the early-onset type—it looks like there's a separate "late-onset" type or types. If you [didn't have enough data to _prove_ anything, but you had to guess](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xTyuQ3cgsPjifr7oj/faster-than-science), what would be your _second_ hypothesis for how this behavior might arise?

 
 What's the _usual_ reason for males to be obsessed with female bodies?
 
 
 What's the _usual_ reason for males to be obsessed with female bodies?
 


@@ -476,11 +482,12 @@ Informal Reddit poll isn't "scientific" enough for you? Fine. The scientific lit
 
 [TODO: one sentence summary from each of—
 
 
 [TODO: one sentence summary from each of—
 

-Blanchard 1985 /papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf
-Lawrence 2005 /papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf
-Smith _et al._ 2005 /papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf
-Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011 /papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf
+Blanchard 1985 /papers/blanchard-typology_of_mtf_transsexualism.pdf  
+Lawrence 2005 /papers/lawrence-sexuality_before_and_after_mtf_srs.pdf  
+Smith _et al._ 2005 /papers/smith_et_al-transsexual_subtypes_clinical_and_theoretical_significance.pdf  
+Nuttbrock _et al._ 2011 /papers/nuttbrock_et_al-a_further_assessment.pdf  

 Zavlin _et al._ 2018 /papers/zavlin_et_al-age_related_differences_for_mtf_transgender_patients.pdf
 Zavlin _et al._ 2018 /papers/zavlin_et_al-age_related_differences_for_mtf_transgender_patients.pdf

+the social desireability responding paper?  

 ]
 
 Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-picked; there are lots of scientific journals, and no doubt a lot of bad science slips through the cracks of the review process.) Want something more indicative of a consensus among practitioners? Fine. The [_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5) (the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association) [says the same thing](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/american-psychiatric-association-supports-the-two-type-transsexual-taxonomy/) in [its section on gender dysphoria](/papers/DSM-V-gender_dysphoria_section.pdf) ([ICD-10-CM codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10-CM) F64.1 and F64.2):
 ]
 
 Peer-reviewed scientific papers aren't enough for you? (They could be cherry-picked; there are lots of scientific journals, and no doubt a lot of bad science slips through the cracks of the review process.) Want something more indicative of a consensus among practitioners? Fine. The [_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5) (the definitive taxonomic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association) [says the same thing](https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/american-psychiatric-association-supports-the-two-type-transsexual-taxonomy/) in [its section on gender dysphoria](/papers/DSM-V-gender_dysphoria_section.pdf) ([ICD-10-CM codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10-CM) F64.1 and F64.2):


@@ -525,13 +532,24 @@ But [the fuzzy low-resolution model is _way too good_](https://surveyanon.wordpr
 
 I _do_ have a _lot_ of uncertainty about what the True Causal Graph looks like, even if it seems obvious that the two-type taxonomy coarsely approximates it. Gay femininity and autogynephilia are obviously very important nodes in the True Graph, but there's going to be more detail to the whole story: what _other_ factors influence people's decision to transition, including [incentives](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) and cultural factors that evolve over time?
 
 
 I _do_ have a _lot_ of uncertainty about what the True Causal Graph looks like, even if it seems obvious that the two-type taxonomy coarsely approximates it. Gay femininity and autogynephilia are obviously very important nodes in the True Graph, but there's going to be more detail to the whole story: what _other_ factors influence people's decision to transition, including [incentives](/2017/Dec/lesser-known-demand-curves/) and cultural factors that evolve over time?
 

-Cultural attitudes towards men and maleness have shifted markedly in our feminist era. It feels awkward to say so, but as a result, conscientious boys taught to disdain the crimes of men may pick up an internalized misandry, which could provide a motive to identify with femaleness and disidentify with maleness, which could either intensify the interpretation of autogynephilic attraction as a [ego-syntonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic) beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing (rather than an ego-dystonic sex thing to be ashamed of), or be a source of gender dysphoria in males who aren't autogynephilic at all.
-
-I remember one night at the Univerity in Santa Cruz when I had the insight that it was possible to make generalizations about groups of people while allowing for exceptions (in contrast to my previous stance that generalizations were always morally wrong)—and immediately and eagerly proclaimed that _men are terrible_.
+Cultural attitudes towards men and maleness have shifted markedly in our feminist era. It feels awkward to say so, but ... as a result, conscientious boys taught to disdain the crimes of men may pick up an internalized misandry? I remember one night at the Univerity in Santa Cruz when I had the insight that it was possible to make generalizations about groups of people while allowing for exceptions (in contrast to my previous stance that generalizations about people were _always morally wrong_)—and immediately, eagerly proclaimed that _men are terrible_.

 
 Or consider computer scientist Scott Aaronson's account (in his infamous [Comment 171](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664)) that his "recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man [...] [a]nything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which [...] meant being consumed by desires that one couldn't act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness."
 
 
 Or consider computer scientist Scott Aaronson's account (in his infamous [Comment 171](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2091#comment-326664)) that his "recurring fantasy, through this period, was to have been born a woman, or a gay man [...] [a]nything, really, other than the curse of having been born a heterosexual male, which [...] meant being consumed by desires that one couldn't act on or even admit without running the risk of becoming an objectifier or a stalker or a harasser or some other creature of the darkness."
 

-Or consider [TODO: "Not Coming Out" "Do I even want to convince someone who will only listen to me when they're told by the rules that they have to see me as a girl?" (this version of the post is more candid)]
+Or there's a piece that makes the rounds on social media occasionally: ["I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out"](https://medium.com/@jencoates/i-am-a-transwoman-i-am-in-the-closet-i-am-not-coming-out-4c2dd1907e42), which (in part) discusses the author's frustration at having one's feelings and observations being dismissed on account of being perceived as a cis male. "Do I even _want_ to convince someone who will only listen to me when they're told by the rules that they have to see me as a girl?" the author wonders.
+
+"I hate that the only effective response I can give to 'boys are shit' is 'well I’m not a boy.'"
+
+(The "told by the rules that they have to see me" (!!) phrasing in the current revision is _very_ telling; the originally published version said 
+
+
+which could provide a motive to identify with femaleness and disidentify with maleness, which could either intensify the interpretation of autogynephilic attraction as a [ego-syntonic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosyntonic_and_egodystonic) beautiful pure sacred self-identity thing (rather than an ego-dystonic sex thing to be ashamed of), or be a source of gender dysphoria in males who aren't autogynephilic at all.
+
+
+
+
+
+

 
 To the extent that "cognitive" things like internalized-misandry manifesting as dysphoria is common (or has _become_ more common), then maybe the two-type taxonomy isn't androphilic/autogynephilic so much as it is androphilic/not-otherwise-specified: the early-onset type is very behaviorally distinct and has a very straightforward motive to transition (it would be _less_ weird not to); it might not be as easy for a clinician to distinguish autogynephilia from "cognitive" gender problems in the grab-bag of all other males showing up to the gender clinic for any other reason.
 
 
 To the extent that "cognitive" things like internalized-misandry manifesting as dysphoria is common (or has _become_ more common), then maybe the two-type taxonomy isn't androphilic/autogynephilic so much as it is androphilic/not-otherwise-specified: the early-onset type is very behaviorally distinct and has a very straightforward motive to transition (it would be _less_ weird not to); it might not be as easy for a clinician to distinguish autogynephilia from "cognitive" gender problems in the grab-bag of all other males showing up to the gender clinic for any other reason.
 


@@ -539,7 +557,7 @@ To the extent that "cognitive" things like internalized-misandry manifesting as
 
 Okay, so the public narrative about transness is obviously, _obviously_ false. That's a problem, because almost no matter what you want, true beliefs are more useful than false beliefs for making decisions that get you what you want.
 
 
 Okay, so the public narrative about transness is obviously, _obviously_ false. That's a problem, because almost no matter what you want, true beliefs are more useful than false beliefs for making decisions that get you what you want.
 

-Fortunately, Yudkowsky's writing had brought together a whole community of brilliant people dedicated to refining the art of human rationality—the methods of acquiring true beliefs and using them to make decisions that get you what you want. So now that I _know_ the public narrative is obviously false, and that I have the outlines of a better theory (even though I could use a lot of help pinning down the details, and I don't know what the social policy implications are, because the optimal policy computation is a complicated value trade-off), all I _should_ have to do is carefully explain why the public narrative is delusional, and then because my arguments are so much better, all the smart serious rational people will either agree with me, or at least be eager to _clarify_ exactly where they disagree and what their alternative theory is, so that we can move the state of public knowledge forward together, in order to help the great common task of optimizing the universe in accordance with humane values.
+Fortunately, Yudkowsky's writing had brought together a whole community of brilliant people dedicated to refining the art of human rationality—the methods of acquiring true beliefs and using them to make decisions that get you what you want. So now that I _know_ the public narrative is obviously false, and that I have the outlines of a better theory (even though I could use a lot of help pinning down the details, and I don't know what the social policy implications are, because the optimal policy computation is a complicated value trade-off), all I _should_ have to do is carefully explain why the public narrative is delusional, and then because my arguments are so much better, all the smart serious rational people will either agree with me (in public), or at least be eager to _clarify_ (in public) exactly where they disagree and what their alternative theory is, so that we can move the state of public knowledge forward together, in order to help the great common task of optimizing the universe in accordance with humane values.

 
 Of course, this is kind of a niche topic—if you're not a male with this psychological condition, or a woman who doesn't want to share all female-only spaces with them, you probably have no reason to care—but there are a _lot_ of males with this psychological condition around here! If this whole "rationality" subculture isn't completely fake, then we should be interested in getting the correct answer in public _for ourselves_.
 
 
 Of course, this is kind of a niche topic—if you're not a male with this psychological condition, or a woman who doesn't want to share all female-only spaces with them, you probably have no reason to care—but there are a _lot_ of males with this psychological condition around here! If this whole "rationality" subculture isn't completely fake, then we should be interested in getting the correct answer in public _for ourselves_.