"I Tell Myself" Sunday drafting session 3: on the verthandi

diff --git a/notes/i-tell-myself-notes.txt b/notes/i-tell-myself-notes.txt
index 73a8d8f..c7265fe 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/i-tell-myself-notes.txt
+++ b/notes/i-tell-myself-notes.txt
@@ -492,9 +492,8 @@ The short story ["Failed Utopia #4-2"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTK
 
 At the time, [I expressed horror](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/ctpkTaqTKbmm6uRgC/failed-utopia-4-2/comment/PhiGnX7qKzzgn2aKb) at the idea in the comments section, because my quasi-religious psychological-sex-differences denialism required that I be horrified. But looking back eleven years later (my deconversion from my teenage religion being pretty thorough at this point, I think), the _argument makes sense_ (though you need an additional [handwave](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HandWave) to explain why the AI doesn't give every _individual_ their separate utopia—if existing women and men aren't optimal partners for each other, so too are individual men not optimal same-sex friends for each other).
 
-verthandi
+On my reading of the text, it is _significant_ that the AI-synthesized complements for men are given their own name, the _verthandi_, rather than just being referred to as women. The _verthandi_ may _look like_ women, they may be _approximately_ psychologically human, but the _detailed_ psychology of "superintelligently-engineered optimal romantic partner for a human male" is not going to come out of the distribution of actual human females, and judicious exercise of the [tenth virtue of precision](http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/) demands that a _different word_ be coined for this hypothetical science-fictional type of person.
 
-[on my reading, it's an important part of the argument that _verthandi_ are a _separate thing_, not just synthesized women]
 
 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QZs4vkC7cbyjL9XA9/changing-emotions