* Aella https://knowingless.com/2019/06/06/side-effects-of-preferred-pronouns/
* "gamete size"—this is a tic where everyone knows what sex is, but no one is allowed to acknowledge the cluster
* maybe worth explaining why I keep saying "sex category" instead of "gender"—and be consistent about it
- * transition interventions are bundled
+ * transition interventions are bundled: asking for pronouns could only plausibly be a good idea if coupled with further interventions—but that's not the picture we'd get if we took Yudkowsky literally
* also take a crack at the Aristotelan binary sports Tweet
* this post needs to exist because I can't let him have the last word
* I need to acknowledge the
* maybe by "much more strongly ... different firm attachments", he's pointing to different people having different intuitions about what male/female clusters map to; that's definitely a thing, but it's wrong to conflate that with "Maybe it's like not being named Oliver"; people do agree on the approximate meaning of blue and green even if there are edge cases, cite fallacy of gray
+ * introductory sentence before referencing "we" or "the community"
+ * can some of the asides be yanked into footnotes??
+
More Yudkowsky playing dumb—
> What separates your stance from "I consider 'parmesan' to refer to only cheese from the Parma region in Italy and I don't appreciate being asked to lie"?
as far as I can tell, I'm only doing what you taught me to do: carve reality at the joints, speak the truth even as your voice trembles, make an extraordinary effort when you've got something to protect
How sensitive is he to reputational concerns? Compare feud with Alexander Kruel
+
+-----
+
+[TODO: again, [Yudkowsky's pathological fixation on avoiding "lying"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MN4NRkMw7ggt9587K/firming-up-not-lying-around-its-edge-cases-is-less-broadly) is a distraction from anything that anyone actually cares about. Certainly, I don't believe (a) as stated. But something substantively _similar_ to (a), (a') that self-reports are biased by social desirability and we can't take "gender identity" literally seems _overwhelmingly_ likely to be true, and I have a study to support it— /papers/blanchard-clemmensen-steiner-social_desirability_response_set_and_systematic_distortion.pdf . This should not seem implausible to someone who co-blogged with Robin Hanson for three years! As for (b), I don't think they get more favorable treatment from the rest of Society uniformly, I absolutely believe (b') that there's a _subculture_ that encourages transition for ideological reasons among people who wouldn't think of themselves as "trans" if they lived in a different subculture.
+
+Can we talk about _that_ in your Caliphate, my (a') and (b')? (Which is the stuff I actually care about, not pronouns.) Based on my experiences trying to, my read of the situation is, No, we can't talk about that. But if so,
+
+Subject: blessing to speak freely, and privacy norms?
+
+Dear Eliezer:
+
+Do you particularly _care_ if I publish a couple blog posts that say some negative things about you? (That is, not just responding to object-level arguments, but also carefully and exhaustively explaining the specific sense in which I think you've been culpably intellectually dishonest. I used to trust you as a general-purpose intellectual authority, but I think you've made it very clear that you don't think you can politically afford being worthy of that trust, and I think I have a legitimate interest in writing publicly about why you're Not My Caliph anymore.)
+
+If you actually _care_ about potential reputational damage to you from my writing things that I think I have a legitimate interest in writing about, I would be _willing_ to let you pre-read the drafts before publishing and give you the chance to object to anything you think is unfair, if you _wanted_ ...
+
+But I'd rather agree that that's not necessary. I don't want to waste any more of your time, and I'm noticing it's a lot harder to write when I'm spending more time worrying about what you'd think of me, than on saying the things I need to say. (Because I still have an extremely messed-up cult-leader hero-worship betrayal-trauma silencing complex around you.)
+
+So, since you probably _don't_ particularly care (because it's not AGI alignment and therefore unimportant), **may I please have your advance blessing to just write and publish what I'm thinking so I can get it all out of my system and move on with my life?**
+
+I would assume that the privacy norm applying to me writing about our previous interactions is that I'm obviously allowed to talk about my actions, but that I can't quote your side of private conversations (_e.g._, I can mention _making_ Cheerful Price offers, but have to Glomarize as to whether you accepted), but I am allowed to _anonymously_ quote things I remember you saying (_e.g._, at the Independence Day party; if I say "Someone advised me that I was living in the should-universe, and I said [...]", and some readers could speculate that "someone" was you, that's not my fault). I don't think you can reasonably object to this, but tell me if you somehow do. I remain,
+
+Your faithful student,
+Zack M. Davis
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff