+I don't think we're in equilibrium; I don't think everyone knows what's going on
+
+
fragments—
O Wad Some Power the Giftie Gie Us; Or, the Identity Dysphoria Trap (school dysphoria)
policing: "we definitely expect better models of gender out of you": https://twitter.com/atax1a/status/1157066530028265473
+I just thought of an interesting argument that almost no one else would (because it requires both prog-sight and NRx-sight)
+You know the "signaling hazard" (pace Jim) argument against public tolerance of male homosexuality (tolerating gays interferes with normal men expressing affection for each other without being seen as gay, which is bad for unit cohesion, &c.). Until recently, I hadn't thought much of it (because of my prog upbringing)—why do you care if someone isn't sure you're straight?
+but recent events have made me more sympathetic to its empirical reality—if human nature is such that 140+ IQ ppl actually can't publicly clear up a trivial philosophy-of-language dispute because of the fear of appearing transphobic—well, that's really dumb, but it's the SAME KIND of dumb as "can't express male friendship because of the fear of appearing gay"
+which suggests a "signaling hazard" argument in favor of political correctness (!!)—we can't tolerate racism, or else Good people would have to incur more costs to signal antiracism (same structure as "we can't tolerate gays, or else normal guys have to incur more costs to signal not-gayness")
+
+older works (pre-second wave feminism?) would actually say "man" (or "woman"—see how anachronistic it feels to put the female option second and in parentheses?), presumably not because human nature has changed that much, but because of shifting cultural priorities about when sex is "relevant." (Modern speakers [similarly frown on](https://agentultra.com/blog/the-black-man-stopped-me/) mentioning race when it's not relevant.)
+
+My gender crusade becomes much less interesting insofar as it can be explained simply by me being born too early and not getting "kids these days." It's not that cultural change is necessarily bad; it's that I want culture to innovate in the direction of "achieving godlike understanding of objective reality and optimizing the hell out of it" rather than "playing mind games on each other to make it artificially harder to notice that we don't actually live in a Total Morphological Freedom tech regime."
+
+
+"Had I not transitioned, I would fear the power you have over me, and remain silent." https://aria.dog/support-all-your-friends/
+
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/ftm/comments/cqplrh/how_do_yall_cope_in_mixed_trans_spaces/
+
+Raven is cosplayed more than any other Teen Titan
+
+[thousand-dollar ultra-realistic mask](https://www.creafx.com/en/special-make-up-effects/taylor-silicone-mask/)
+
+https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGTKL9LokHg (wait for the reveal at 0:44!)
+
+colorful sandals
+
+even my post-redpill intuitions endorse something like "White people can't be racist" and "Men can't be sexist", but rather than "-ism is power plus privilege", the rationale is "We're thick-skinned and have better things to do than play victimhood politics"
+
+
+ I thought it should be acceptable for someone to send one final "OK, sorry" message in response to being told to stop contacting someone
+where I feel like my position is analogous to Scott Aaronson's complaint about his police encounter: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3903 , that people who are in the process of complying should be treated with good faith; you don't want the cops to shoot unarmed men and defend themselves on the grounds of, "Well, he wasn't complying fast enough"
+
+that's the thing; I read as lefty because I am morally lefty (in contrast to Real Men Who Lift &c.); it's just that I had the "bad luck" of reading everything I could about race and IQ after the James Watson affair in 'aught-seven, and all my leftness is filtered through ten years of living with inconvenient hypotheses
+
+"Every year, the people who are isomorphic in opinions to you become more masculine (because of everyone moving left), which means they are going to have more inferential distance on gender dysphoria."
+
+you can get away with a lot when you read as a lefty? At hack day, someone said they read about Pinterest's skin-tone debiaser tech being thrown out because it drew on very old papers by a EUGENICIST (article turned out to be https://www.wired.com/story/pinterest-skin-tone-search/ ), and I was like, Oh, interesting, so what was wrong with the research? That got an incredulous stare: "You mean, what's wrong with eugenics??!" And I'm like, no, that's not what I mean, I'm curious about the specfiic technical flaw, which is distinct from the author's odious views
+and then someone else related an anecdote about JPEG being racist (because the standard was defined to match old chemical photography, which was optimized for pictures of white people), which is the kind of legit answer I was looking for, to which I could respond with a proggy "Wooooooow"
+I know how to pronounce "shibboleth" correctly
+almost wish I had been brave enough to go for "It depends on what you mean by 'eugenics'; embryo selection looks super exciting" (the last time I said this in public, at my old company's holiday party the other year, I got a fair amount of horrified disbelief)
+
+the conjunction of (a) Katie Cohen getting beaten up by the police and dragged to psychiatric prison, (b) the Linux Contributor Covenant thing, and (c) the Brett Cavanagh thing has restored my "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must"-sight, which may prove instrumentally useful for doing social science
+
+Kavanagh outgroup-male Till
+
+the Gods of the Copybook Headings might call it cuckoldry, but I call it Practice
+
+(I should confess that while part of the joy of hearing non-Berkeley-2018 views is the intellectual profit of engaging with ideas, a possibly-larger part is just relief at being able to punch right for once, now that I spend most of my time these days punching left)
+
+
+my insufficiently requited love "Beatrice" retweeted this: https://twitter.com/whodamanny/status/1045409509546446848
+
+whatever actually happened in that interview is less interesting than the fact that Manny thinks this makes him look good. The candidate ... raised his voice? That's it??
+
+But if I find this kind of thing baffling/annoying rather than outrageous, is that an inherent men-don't-play-victimhood-politics asymmetry, or is it just because I know outrage is not a winning move in the contingent environment of Berkeley 2018? (Contrast to black men feeling outraged at having security called on them friviously)
+
+my writing is not doing much on this front, because even if I don't get ostracized, people are just like, "Oh, Zack, he writes weird transphobic stuff but is otherwise OK" whereas people actually like and publicly-praise and listen to [...]
+
+there might be a lot of AGP-transitioners in the win condition
+just not the kind that enter women's bike races and gloat about it
+
+(I would still be at war with it if I thought I could win; unfortunately, Mother Nature has the big guns)
+
+Chesterson has many fences on his property
+I like the second-wave "Free to Be You and Me" space where you loudly insist that girls can do anything, but don't pretend that biological sex is fake, which is past some of the fences (quite a lot of them, really), but not as far as Berkeley 2018
+
+what I would really love to see in the open-source world is opposition to the trans agenda, from women, on radical feminist grounds
+but ... you know, there aren't very many women around to begin with
+
+I wonder what would have happened if Kavanaugh had been AGP and transitioned ten years ago, but all the other facts of the case were the same
+
+
+there's also the phenomenon of people who are aggressively SJWish also being noticeably not familiar about the position/community they're defending as detectible by shibboleth usage (someone I had a long back-and-forth on /r/slatestarcodex had never heard the term "deadnaming" before; tech guy with "he/him" in his bio spells "transwoman" as one word)
+(I spell "trans woman" as two words not because I believe the "it's just an adjective for a kind of woman" bullshit, but I know the shibboleths and so does my audience)
+but you never had to go to seminary to be offended by blasphemy
+
+psychology note about the Quillette meetup: I felt really uncomfortable with how the organizer (an older white man) wanted to talk about the dysfunctionality of black communities, not because I expected to disagree too much, but because he didn't make an effort to signal that he had a non-racial-animus-motivated reason to be interested in the topic (contrast this to how I constantly mention "I was on HRT for five months" during my campaign; I need to say that to show that I have skin in the game)
+Yeah, that seems a bit edgy for Quillette
+That guy was probably in cognitive dissonance and feeling the need to test the waters
+I felt especially awkward being at a table with him in public in the context of the black waitress complementing me on my Steven Universe T-shirt five minutes earlier
+
+I guess I see your point that if I can't trust these clowns to even put a "social trust" term into their utilitarian pseudo-calculation for open bathrooms, then I shouldn't trust them on open borders, either
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/comments/cp1tap/gender_euphoria_genital_engorgement_whats_the/
+
+https://humanvarieties.org/2017/07/01/measurement-error-regression-to-the-mean-and-group-differences/
+
+I'm imagining that there's some margin at which the shame and intimidation is counterbalanced by E pur si muove concerns. (Conditional on the hypothesis that, in fact, e pur si muove.)
+
+http://www.trans.cafe/posts/2016/6/27/17-signs-i-was-transgender-but-didnt-know-it
+
+https://medium.com/@transstyleguide/alternatives-to-afab-and-amab-d7cf8fe20a72
+
+changing emotions/accent fantasies: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSEHwYbrwtn/other-people-s-procedural-knowledge-gaps/comment/pheakgvLbFndXccXC
+
+There are Facts About Males that neurotypicals probably don't explain in words? Something about how a gentleman who doesn't want to be more specific, if he were going to be more specific, might end up using the word curvature. But maybe I've already said too much.
+
+support group can't mention anatomy: https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/bripts/peak_trans_ix_tell_your_story_here/f6wjry3/
+
+https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/transwomen-in-my-ptsd-group-and-performing-femininity.1004483/
+
+Damore new job: https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/1034623633174478849
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/itsafetish/comments/d54b7x/thank_you_and_goodbye/
+
+"Genuine question: Are there any straight transitioned women out there? Who weren’t previously gay?" https://twitter.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1204773053986725889
+
+https://twitter.com/LaraAdamsMille1/status/1199132705478381568
+
+-----
+
+If someone wants to rewrite this post because they can do a better job of it (perhaps, as Jim suggests, because the post has objective flaws that are causually related to the author's crimes), that's great.
+
+If someone wants to re-write the post because we want to use the idea but it would be embarrassing to give the author credit for it, that's just PR-driven plagiarism. And I don't think it would even work.
+
+Suppose we include "Affordance Widths" in the Best-of-2018 collection as-is. If /r/SneerClub gets word of it, they'll point and sneer and say, "Look, the robot cult blog just canonized a post by a rapist! What terrible people they are!"
+
+Suppose we get someone to re-write the post because of the reputational risk. If /r/SneerClub gets word of it, they'll point to this discussion and sneer and say, "The robot cult blog rewrote a post because they're worried about reputational risks. But the fact that their rationale was 'reputational risks' suggests that they don't know that rape is wrong. What terrible people they are!"
+
+And they would kind of have a point? The function of "bad reputation" is to correspond to things that are actually bad.
+
+-----
+
+https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/12/childrens-transgender-clinic-hit-35-resignations-three-years/
+
+'someone saying they're MtF is like waving a big red flag in front of me that says, "I will try to seduce you in the creepiest way, talk your ear off about model trains, and violate your boundaries with my fetishes."' https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/dy7241/peak_trans_x_tell_your_story_here/faj48v9/
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/eacgc5/a_tim_in_healthcare/
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/eab3wy/relieved_to_see_a_woman/
+
+TW/TERF rape fantasy https://twitter.com/LaraAdamsMille1/status/1209258661769621506
+
+peeling back another layer of the onion of algorithmic bad faith, "Why are you being so nice to me here?! I obviously don't deserve it!" was pretty performative on my part (not because I was consciously putting on an act, but in the sense that all human social behavior is an act), a socio-psychological "immune response" developed in response to a tendency I perceive for people to collude to be nice to each other (pretending to agree with whoever they're currently talking to) rather than coordinating to produce shared maps. So in contrast to the usual pattern of people optimizing their speech to deflect blame from themselves, I put on a show of allocating blame to (my past) self to signal that I care about Justice (people being blamed the correct amount), even when that amount of blame would be unjust if someone else were doing it rather than it being performative social self-injury. I HOPE this comment makes sense, but let me know if it instead reads as illegible Vassarian moonspeak.
+
+"Telling soldiers in a war that their bullets are destroying valuable human knowledge is not hard to understand - but they often won't respond the way you'd hope." https://twitter.com/ben_r_hoffman/status/1122953098761330692
+
+"Being misgendered means that how you saw yourself, just a woman casually discussing a TV show or a movie, suddenly gets stripped away and replaced with "...but of course we know you're really a man." It’s nightmarish.
+
+It means that all of the other people who have been saying 'she' might have been just 'playing along.'" well, yes
+
+ https://byrslf.co/i-wasnt-annoyed-at-your-misgendering-me-b13cd9480b2c
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/eh0wz9/tim_at_my_gym_has_terrible_etiquette_in_the/
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/ehy9td/transwomen_in_the_changeroom_my_experience_as_a/
+
+four studies using multivariate methodology in personality: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/sex-differences-in-personality-are-large-and-important.html
+
+Yglasis's mask slips: https://archive.md/jf7ur
+
+bronies: https://twitter.com/TransSalamander/status/1045911272670339072
+
+https://feminina.eu/2017/10/24/why-blanchardians-are-scientifically-unsound-and-no-its-not-because-activists-hate-them/
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/dy7241/peak_trans_x_tell_your_story_here/feycktw/
+
+https://twitter.com/kittypurrzog/status/1220842510248886272
+
+https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/01/24/42658513/seattle-school-board-takes-steps-to-dismantle-gifted-program
+
+"For goodness sake, I mean your pronouns are on your damned jacket!" https://twitter.com/BrieCayne/status/1221212541977800704
+
+academic freedom on campus: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-washington-should-not.html
+
+https://www.unz.com/isteve/post-gay-marriage-cont/
+
+"Dodging learning people's deadnames like some sort of willfully ignorant ninja." https://twitter.com/yaahc_/status/1222542847322099713
+
+https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/it-must-be-said/
+
+the people you're afraid of aren't going to read a blog whose URL is _unremediatedgender.space_
+
+[Felix Conrad](http://transcendmovement.com/felix-conrad-confesses-that-he-secretly-believes-in-autogynephilia/)—
+
+[link is dead, but it's allegedly in his Kindle book]
+
+> Imagine the following scenario: a researcher discovers that one ethnic group has a lower IQ than another and that the cause is genetic–not educational. In my opinion that research is as dangerous as a toxic virus and I’d wipe any hard drive that contained such research. That is intellectual integrity in my opinion.
+
+Protip: you don't have to preemptively commit suicide! Wait for other people to kill you instead! (Desired privacy settings for this update: people smart enough to understand metaphors.)
+
+"how did you realize you were non-binary": https://twitter.com/QueerGirlEmilie/status/1225517017035350016
+
+religious affiliation is shared environment https://twitter.com/ent3c/status/1161717179802443778
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/f1nedr/tims_bragging_in_female_weight_lifting_subs/
+
+during a Feb 2020 discussion of salary transparency: "For those of you telling me I make too much: [...] I'm one of the top women in my role." https://twitter.com/theavalkyrie/status/1228528673726140416 She transitioned in May 2018!! (https://blog.thea.codes/i-am-thea) Last year's taxable income: $360k https://twitter.com/theavalkyrie/status/1228457455350235137
+
+> prairie dogs are not a type of dog and guinea pigs are not a type of pig https://www.reddit.com/r/GCdebatesQT/comments/f4dmsf/all_for_those_who_find_the_term_cis_offensive_how/fhqah6k/
+
+> The function of 'trans' in that term is to indicate that they're not actually a type of woman.
+>
+> Compare: counterfeit money, toy gun, soy milk, glass pearls, veggie meat, faux fur https://www.reddit.com/r/GCdebatesQT/comments/f4dmsf/all_for_those_who_find_the_term_cis_offensive_how/fhpxjx0/
+
+"privative adjective": http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/Fake/fakeguns.htm
+
+> Long story short, I was pro-trans until I had exposure to actual trans people. Then the wrongthink started creeping in: wow, this looks an awful lot like a social contagion and wow, this looks an awful lot like a homophobic fetish and wow, this looks an awful lot like lesbian self-erasure and wow, this looks an awful lot like a protracted exercise in medically-assisted self harm. https://www.reddit.com/r/GCdebatesQT/comments/f1finv/formerly_qt_supporters_who_are_now_gc_what_made/fh5tzj5/
+
+> being a trans woman is 10% war on hair & 90% coming to terms w the fact that wanting tits ultimately led to u joining an anti nazi coalition
+https://twitter.com/avaavita/status/908416401312018433
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff