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 (?!).
+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._
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.
...
-I'm sorry, but I can't take this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously lying_](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. Nevertheless, I am _incredibly_ skeptical that Yudkowsky _actually_ doesn't know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached
+I'm sorry, but I can't take this self-report literally. I certainly [don't think Yudkowsky was _consciously_ lying](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSmgPNS6MTJsunTzS/maybe-lying-doesn-t-exist) when he wrote that. Nevertheless, I am _incredibly_ skeptical that Yudkowsky _actually_ doesn't know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to sex more firmly than a proper name is attached to someone's appearance.
[TODO: how could you possibly know that?]
The thing is, Eliezer Yudkowsky is a native English speaker born in 1979. As a native English speaker born in 1987, I have a _pretty good_ mental model of how native English speakers born in the late 20th century use language.
+And one of the things native English speakers born in the late 20th century are _very good_ at doing, is noticing what sex people are and using the corresponding pronouns without consciously thinking about it, because the pronouns are attached to the concept of sex in their heads more firmly than proper names are attached to something in their heads.
-I would bet that at _some point_ in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ to refer to someone
-
+I would bet at very generous odds at some point in his four decades on Earth, Eliezer Yudkowsky has used _she_ or _he_ on the basis of perceived sex to refer to someone whose name he didn't know. Because _all native English speakers do this_.
> My current policy stance is that anybody who does feel that way needs to get some perspective about how it can be less firmly attached in other people's heads; and how their feelings don't get to control everybody's language protocol or accuse non-protocol users of lying; especially when different people with firm attachments have _different_ firm attachments and we can't make them all be protocol.
-The sheer _chutzpah_ here is jaw-dropping. Someone's feelings don't get to control everybody's language protocol?! But—the causal–historical reason we're discussing pronoun reform _at all_ is _precisely_ to let people's feelings control everybody's language protocol! The original post is very explicit about this! In the original post, Yudkowsky wrote:
+The sheer _chutzpah_ here is jaw-dropping. Someone's feelings don't get to control everybody's language protocol, huh? But—the causal–historical reason we're discussing pronoun reform _at all_ is _precisely_ to let trans people's feelings control everybody's language protocol! The original post is very explicit about this! It says:
> Even _before_ considering all gender issues, there is some sense in which somebody saying "help help pronouns attacking" sounds to me like a sympathetic innocent asking to get out from under a bad system, not like a law-deuniversalizer asking for exceptions from a good system.
somewhere—
* Douglas Hofstader also made fun of gendered pronouns with his "Person Paper"—but notice that he didn't even consider the self-chosen criterion!!
- * similarly, Ms. supplanted Mrs./Miss, rather than circularly redefining the latter
* singular they for named individuals undermined indefinite singular 'they'
]
If the software is written so that each computer broadcasts a `{"object_type": "BLEGG"}` JSON message when it detects a [blue egg-shaped object](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4FcxgdvdQP45D6Skg/disguised-queries) in front of its webcam, then we can can say that the `{"object_type": "BLEGG"}` message "means" that a blue egg-shaped object was seen;
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/
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff