check in

diff --git a/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md b/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md
index d0e77ce..020d988 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md
+++ b/content/drafts/book-review-facing-reality.md
@@ -269,3 +269,7 @@ https://archive.ph/QerlW
 > The American Medical Association has just released "Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts," a strange document that calls for doctors to insert progressive politics into even plain statements of fact.
 https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1454468272011743239
 https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf
 > The American Medical Association has just released "Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts," a strange document that calls for doctors to insert progressive politics into even plain statements of fact.
 https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/1454468272011743239
 https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf

+
+https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-18/uc-slams-door-on-sat-and-all-standardized-admissions-tests
+
+https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/11/overstepping-auntie-relationship-parenting-advice.html

diff --git a/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md b/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
index 2469120..53252a1 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
+++ b/content/drafts/challenges-to-yudkowskys-pronoun-reform-proposal.md
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ This may be clearer to some readers if we consider a distinction less emotionall
 
 One could argue that the _tú_/_usted_ distinction is bad language design for the same reason Yudkowsky opposes the _she_/_he_ distinction: you shouldn't be forced to make a call on how familiar your relationship with someone is just in order to be able to use a pronoun for them. The modern English way is more flexible: you _can_ indicate formality if you want to by saying additional words, but it's not baked into the grammar itself.
 
 
 One could argue that the _tú_/_usted_ distinction is bad language design for the same reason Yudkowsky opposes the _she_/_he_ distinction: you shouldn't be forced to make a call on how familiar your relationship with someone is just in order to be able to use a pronoun for them. The modern English way is more flexible: you _can_ indicate formality if you want to by saying additional words, but it's not baked into the grammar itself.
 

-However, if you were going to reform Spanish (or some other language with the second-person formality distinction), you would probably abolish the distinction altogether, and just settle on one second-person singular pronoun. Indeed, that's what happened in English historically—the formal _you_ took over as the universal second-person pronoun, and the informal singular _thou_/_thee_/_thine_ has vanished from common usage. (People still recognize it as a second-person pronoun when encountered in old poetry—"The truth shall be thy warrant", _&c._—but most probably aren't aware of the formality distinction.) You wouldn't keep both forms, but circularly redefine them as referring only to the referent's preferred choice of address (?!). Similarly, when second-wave feminists objected to the convention of _Miss_ or _Mrs._ forcing speakers to take a stance on a woman's marital status, the response was [to popularize the marriage-agnostic alternative _Ms._](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.#Historical_development_and_revival_of_the_term), not to circularly redefine _Miss_ and _Mrs._
+However, if you were going to reform Spanish (or some other language with the second-person formality distinction), you would probably abolish the distinction altogether, and just settle on one second-person singular pronoun. Indeed, that's what happened in English historically—the formal _you_ took over as the universal second-person pronoun, and the informal singular _thou_/_thee_/_thine_ has vanished from common usage. (People still recognize it as a second-person pronoun when encountered in old poetry—"The truth shall be thy warrant", _&c._—but most probably aren't aware of the formality distinction.) You wouldn't keep both forms, but circularly redefine them as referring only to the referent's preferred choice of address (?!). Similarly, when second-wave feminists objected to the convention of _Miss_ or _Mrs._ forcing speakers to identify a woman's marital status, the response was [to popularize the marriage-agnostic alternative _Ms._](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms.#Historical_development_and_revival_of_the_term), not to circularly redefine _Miss_ and _Mrs._

 
 Really, the circular definition shouldn't satisfy _anyone_: people who want someone to call them _usted_ (or _tú_), do so _because_ of the difference in meaning and implied familiarity/respect, in the _existing_ (pre-reform) language. (Where else could such a preference possibly come from?) From an AI design standpoint, the circular redefinition can be seen as a form of ["wireheading"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aMXhaj6zZBgbTrfqA/a-definition-of-wireheading). You want people to respect you as a superior, and if they respected you as a superior, they'd call you _usted_. That could make a policy of coercing people into calling you _usted_ seem superficially appealing. But the appeal solely rests on confusing the pre-reform meaning (under which the choice of _usted_ implies respect and is therefore desirable) and the post-reform meaning (under which the choice implies nothing). Whether or not the proponent of the change consciously _notices_ the problem, the redefinition is _functionally_ "hypocritical": it's only desirable insofar as people aren't _actually_ using it internally.
 
 
 Really, the circular definition shouldn't satisfy _anyone_: people who want someone to call them _usted_ (or _tú_), do so _because_ of the difference in meaning and implied familiarity/respect, in the _existing_ (pre-reform) language. (Where else could such a preference possibly come from?) From an AI design standpoint, the circular redefinition can be seen as a form of ["wireheading"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aMXhaj6zZBgbTrfqA/a-definition-of-wireheading). You want people to respect you as a superior, and if they respected you as a superior, they'd call you _usted_. That could make a policy of coercing people into calling you _usted_ seem superficially appealing. But the appeal solely rests on confusing the pre-reform meaning (under which the choice of _usted_ implies respect and is therefore desirable) and the post-reform meaning (under which the choice implies nothing). Whether or not the proponent of the change consciously _notices_ the problem, the redefinition is _functionally_ "hypocritical": it's only desirable insofar as people aren't _actually_ using it internally.
 


@@ -51,9 +51,9 @@ This is a pretty basic point, and yet Yudkowsky steadfastly ignores the role of
 
 > It is Shenanigans to try to bake your stance on how clustered things are and how appropriate it is to discretely cluster them using various criteria, _into the pronoun system of a language and interpretation convention that you insist everybody use!_
 
 
 > It is Shenanigans to try to bake your stance on how clustered things are and how appropriate it is to discretely cluster them using various criteria, _into the pronoun system of a language and interpretation convention that you insist everybody use!_
 

-There are a couple of problems with this. First of all, the "that you insist everybody use" part is kind of a [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO) in the current political environment around Yudkowsky's social sphere. A lot of the opposition to self-chosen pronouns is about opposition to _compelled speech_: people who don't think some trans person's transition should "count"—however cruel or capricious that might be—don't want to be coerced into legitimizing it with the pronoun choices in their _own_ speech. That's different from insisting that _others_ use sex-based non-subject-preferred pronouns, which is not something I see much of outside of gender-critical ("TERF") forums. Characterizing the issue as being about "freedom of pronouns", [as Yudkowsky does in the comment section](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228), elides the fact that freedom to specify how other people talk about you is in direct conflict with the freedom of speech of speakers. No matter which side of the conflict one supports, it seems wrong to characterize the self-ID pronoun side as being "pro-freedom", as if there wasn't any "freedom" concerns on the other side. [(Policy debates should not appear one-sided!)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided)
+There are a couple of problems with this. First of all, the "that you insist everybody use" part is kind of a [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO) in the current political environment around Yudkowsky's social sphere. A lot of the opposition to self-chosen pronouns is about opposition to _compelled speech_: people who don't think some trans person's transition should "count"—however cruel or capricious that might be—don't want to be coerced into legitimizing it with the pronoun choices in their _own_ speech. That's different from insisting that _others_ use sex-based non-subject-preferred pronouns, which is not something I see much of outside of gender-critical ("TERF") forums. Characterizing the issue as being about "freedom of pronouns", [as Yudkowsky does in the comment section](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10159421750419228?comment_id=10159421833274228), elides the fact that freedom to specify how _other people_ talk about you is in direct conflict with the freedom of speech of speakers! No matter which side of the conflict one supports, it seems wrong to characterize the self-ID pronoun side as being "pro-freedom", as if there wasn't any "freedom" concerns on the other side. [(Policy debates should not appear one-sided!)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided)

 
 

-More importantly, however, in dicussing how to reform English, we're not actually in the position of defining a language from scratch. Even if you think the cultural evolution of English involved Shenanigans, it's not fair to attribute the Shenanigans to native speakers accurately describing their native language. Certainly, language can evolve; words can change meaning over time; if you can get the people in some community to start using language differently, then you have _ipso facto_ changed their language. But when we consider language as an information-processing system that we can reason about using our standard tools of probability and game theory, we see that in order to change the meaning associated with a word, you actually _do_ have to somehow get people to change their usage. You can _advocate_ for your new meaning and use it in your own speech, but you can't just _declare_ your preferred new meaning and claim that it applies to the language as actually spoken, without speakers actually changing their behavior. As a result, Yudkowsky's proposal "to say that this just _is_ the normative definition" doesn't work.
+More importantly, however, in discussing how to reform English, we're not actually in the position of defining a language from scratch. Even if you think the [cultural evolution](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/) of English involved Shenanigans, it's not fair to attribute the Shenanigans to native speakers accurately describing their native language. Certainly, language can evolve; words can change meaning over time; if you can get the people in some community to start using language differently, then you have _ipso facto_ changed their language. But when we consider language as an information-processing system that we can reason about using our standard tools of probability and game theory, we see that in order to change the meaning associated with a word, you actually _do_ have to somehow get people to change their usage. You can _advocate_ for your new meaning and use it in your own speech, but you can't just _declare_ your preferred new meaning and claim that it applies to the language as actually spoken, without speakers actually changing their behavior. As a result, Yudkowsky's proposal "to say that this just _is_ the normative definition" doesn't work.

 
 To be clear, when I say that the proposal doesn't work, I'm not even saying I disagree with it. I mean that it literally, _factually_ doesn't work! Let me explain.
 
 
 To be clear, when I say that the proposal doesn't work, I'm not even saying I disagree with it. I mean that it literally, _factually_ doesn't work! Let me explain.
 


@@ -75,9 +75,12 @@ The "default for those-who-haven't-asked [going] by gamete size" part of Yudkows
 
 To _actually_ de-gender English while keeping _she_ and _he_ (as contrasted to coordinating a jump to universal singular _they_, or _ve_), you'd need to _actually_ shatter the correlation between pronouns and sex/gender, such that a person's pronouns _were_ just an arbitrary extra piece of data that you couldn't deduce from their appearance and just needed to remember in the same way you have to remember people's names and can't deduce them from their appearances. But as far as I can tell, _no one_ wants this. When's the last time you heard someone you heard someone request pronouns for _non_-gender-related reasons? ("My pronouns are she/her—but note, that's _just_ because I prefer the aesthetics of how the pronouns sound; I'm _not_ in any way claiming that you should believe that I'm in any sense female, which isn't true.") Me neither.
 
 
 To _actually_ de-gender English while keeping _she_ and _he_ (as contrasted to coordinating a jump to universal singular _they_, or _ve_), you'd need to _actually_ shatter the correlation between pronouns and sex/gender, such that a person's pronouns _were_ just an arbitrary extra piece of data that you couldn't deduce from their appearance and just needed to remember in the same way you have to remember people's names and can't deduce them from their appearances. But as far as I can tell, _no one_ wants this. When's the last time you heard someone you heard someone request pronouns for _non_-gender-related reasons? ("My pronouns are she/her—but note, that's _just_ because I prefer the aesthetics of how the pronouns sound; I'm _not_ in any way claiming that you should believe that I'm in any sense female, which isn't true.") Me neither.
 

-But given that pronouns _do_ convey sex-category information, as a _fact_ about how the brains of actually-existing English speakers _in fact_ process language (whether or not this means that English is terribly designed), some actually-existing English speakers might have reason to object when told to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.
+But given that pronouns _do_ convey sex-category information, as a _fact_ about how the brains of actually-existing English speakers _in fact_ process language (whether or not this means that English is terribly designed), some actually-existing English speakers might have reason to object when pressured to use pronouns in a way that contradicts their perception of what sex people are.
+
+In an article titled ["Pronouns are Rohypnol"](https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/), Barra Kerr compares preferred pronouns to the famous [Stroop effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect). When color words are printed in text of a different color (_e.g._, <span style="color:blue;">red</span>, <span style="color:green">orange</span>, <span style="color:red">yellow</span>, <span style="color:purple">green</span>, <span style="color:orange">blue</span>, _&c._) and people are asked to name the color of the text, they're slow to respond: the meaning of the word interferes with their ability to name the color in front of our eyes.
+
+Kerr suggests that preferred pronouns 

 
 

-In an article titled ["Pronouns are Rohypnol"](https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/), Barra Kerr compares preferred pronouns to the famous [Stroop effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect). When color words are printed in text of a different color (_e.g._, <span style="color:blue;">red</span>, <span style="color:green">orange</span>, <span style="color:red">yellow</span>, <span style="color:purple">green</span>, <span style="color:orange">blue</span>, _&c._) and people are asked to name the color of the text, they're slow to respond: the meaning of the word interferes with our ability to name the color in front of our eyes.

 
 [TODO: Kerr suggests misgendering as an exercise]
 
 
 [TODO: Kerr suggests misgendering as an exercise]
 


@@ -114,6 +117,8 @@ The sheer _chutzpah_ here is jaw-dropping. Someone's feelings don't get to contr
 
 > In terms of important things? Those would be all the things I've read—from friends, from strangers on the Internet, above all from human beings who are people—describing reasons someone does not like to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate, or perhaps at all.
 
 
 > In terms of important things? Those would be all the things I've read—from friends, from strangers on the Internet, above all from human beings who are people—describing reasons someone does not like to be tossed into a Male Bucket or Female Bucket, as it would be assigned by their birth certificate, or perhaps at all.
 

+Okay, so Yudkowsky 
+

 [TODO: self-identity is a Schelling point]
 
 
 [TODO: self-identity is a Schelling point]
 
 


@@ -190,3 +195,5 @@ Maybe this was a design mistake!
 https://www.genderdissent.com/the-resistance-column
 
 https://www.womenarehuman.com/extra-jail-time-for-incarcerated-women-who-use-male-pronouns-for-male-transgender-identifying-inmates/
 https://www.genderdissent.com/the-resistance-column
 
 https://www.womenarehuman.com/extra-jail-time-for-incarcerated-women-who-use-male-pronouns-for-male-transgender-identifying-inmates/

+
+Spanish speakers screw up he/she—because they're used to dropping pronouns! https://cogsci.mindmodeling.org/2017/papers/0639/paper0639.pdf

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
index b381cd4..21727f4 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
@@ -407,3 +407,11 @@ Robert Stadler
 
 https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508?page=14
 > Real people have concepts of their own minds, and contemplate their prior ideas of themselves in relation to a continually observed flow of their actual thoughts, and try to improve both their self-models and their selves. 
 
 https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4508?page=14
 > Real people have concepts of their own minds, and contemplate their prior ideas of themselves in relation to a continually observed flow of their actual thoughts, and try to improve both their self-models and their selves. 

+
+Really, it's impressive how far we got in establishing a cult of Bayesians in a world where "discimination" is a transgression against the dominant ideology! I can't be the only one who got the joke
+
+https://stefanfschubert.com/blog/2020/12/22/legitimate-epistocracy
+
+prevaricate
+
+back in 'aught-nine, Anna commented that no one in our circle was that old, as if you had to be of a particular generation to understand the ideas—that could apply in both directions (the next generation's culture does not look promising to me; midwits say that elders have always said that, but maybe the elders were always right, by the standard preference-stability argument)

diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt
index 8f92a9f..0d9e502 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/notes.txt
+++ b/notes/notes.txt
@@ -2875,3 +2875,22 @@ https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/11/debbie-hayton-which-toilets-should-transwo
 https://somenuanceplease.substack.com/p/social-influence-and-detransition
 
 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/16/trans-women-should-not-have-to-reduce-testosterone-say-new-ioc-guidelines
 https://somenuanceplease.substack.com/p/social-influence-and-detransition
 
 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/nov/16/trans-women-should-not-have-to-reduce-testosterone-say-new-ioc-guidelines

+
+https://spectatorworld.com/topic/pregnant-at-end-of-world-children/
+
+https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/11/a-guide-to-peaking-the-woke-by-an-lgn-reader-most-people-have-no-idea-of-the-harm-that-lies-beneath-the-rainbow-flags-and-the-seemingly-innocuous-mantras/
+
+https://www.xenopolitix.com/post/trans
+> Correctly stated, the current transgender movement's demand is not, "Recognise people who were born biologically and spiritually male as female." Put accurately the demand is actually: "Whatever we say or feel about reality must be granted as true."
+
+https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/49661/there-s-no-transwomen-in-mom-groups
+
+https://www.stellabiderman.com/
+
+https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/teesside-woman-accused-using-sex-22260053
+> Teesside woman accused of exposing penis, using sex toy and masturbating in public
+> She is charged with committing a public nuisance by indecently exposing her penis to other members of the public, whilst masturbating from a property window.
+
+"Gender: A Wider Lens" podcast has Debbie Hayton talking about AGP on episode 51
+
+The "paraphilias are unknown in women" part of the argument was never that strong https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34811651/

diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt
index 715b113..6c7d946 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/post_ideas.txt
+++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt
@@ -1,8 +1,7 @@
 2021 significant posts—
 2021 significant posts—

-_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America

 _ Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal
 _ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning 
 _ Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal
 _ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning 

-
+_ Book Review: Charles Murray's Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America

 
 Queue—
 _ "Never Smile" linkpost
 
 Queue—
 _ "Never Smile" linkpost