-https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376
-https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/
+Incidental or not, the conflict is real, and everyone smart knows it—even if it's not easy to _prove_ that everyone smart knows it, because everyone smart is very careful what they say in public. Scott Aaronson wrote of [the Kolmogorov Option](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3376) (which Scott Alexander aptly renamed [Kolmorogov complicity](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/): serve the cause of Truth by cultivating a bubble that focuses on truths that won't get you in trouble with the local political authorities. This after the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov, who _knew better than to pick fights he couldn't win_.
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+Becuase of the conflict, and because we happen to have to a _wildly_ disproportionate number of _people like me_ around, I think being "pro-trans" ended up being part of the community's "shield" against external political pressure, of the sort that perked up after [the February 2021 _New York Times_ hit piece about Alexander's blog](https://archive.is/0Ghdl). (The _magnitude_ of heat brought on by the recent _Times_ piece and its aftermath was new, but the underlying dynamics had been present for years.)
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+Jacob Falkovich notes, ["The two demographics most over-represented in the SlateStarCodex readership according to the surveys are transgender people and Ph.D. holders."](https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1275524303430262790) Aaronson notes (in commentary on the _Times_ article) "the rationalist community's legendary openness to alternative gender identities and sexualities" as something that would have "complicated the picture" of our portrayal as anti-feminist.
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+Even the hater–critics grudgingly concede that "... Not Man for the Categories" is to Alexander's credit:
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+I _should_ be sympathetic to the argument, which makes a lot of sense.
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+https://otherlife.co/respectability-is-not-worth-it-reply-to-slatestarcodex/