Although they're not the only ones with an structural advantage: a social order whose gender convention was "Biological sex only; transsexualism isn't a thing; sucks to be you if you want people to believe that you're the sex that you aren't" would _also_ be a Schelling point. (Trans people's [developmental sex](http://unremediatedgender.space/2019/Sep/terminology-proposal-developmental-sex/) is not really in dispute.) It's the _moderates_ who want to be nice to trans people _without_ destroying the public concept of sex who are in trouble!
-Still, I think most people reading this post _are_ "moderates" in this sense. Schelling points are powerful. If we're _not_ culturally-genocidal extremists who want to exclude transsexuals from Society (and therefore reject the "pronouns = sex, no exceptions" Schelling point), isn't it reasonable that we end up at the self-identity Schelling point, at least for the trivial courtesy of pronouns?
+Still, I think most people reading this post _are_ "moderates" in this sense. Schelling points are powerful. If we're _not_ culturally-genocidal extremists who want to exclude transsexuals from Society (and therefore reject the "pronouns = sex, no exceptions" Schelling point), isn't it reasonable that we end up at the self-identity Schelling point—at least as far as the trivial courtesy of pronouns is concerned, even if some of the moderates want to bargain for the right to use natal-sex categories in some contexts?
-Sure. Yes. Indeed
+Sure. Yes. And indeed, I don't misgender people! (In public. Only rarely in private.) I'm not arguing that Yudkowsky should misgender people! The purpose of this post is not to argue with Yudkowsky's pronoun usage, but rather to argue with the offered usage _rationale_ that "the simplest and best protocol is, '"He" refers to the set of people who have asked us to use "he", with a default for those-who-haven't-asked that goes by gamete size' and to say that this just _is_ the normative definition."
-[...]
+As I have explained at length, this _rationale_ doesn't work and isn't true (even if better rationales, like the Schelling point argument, can end up recommending the same behavior). _No one_ actually believes that _she_ and _he_ aren't attached to gender in people's heads, and playing dumb about this to try to make it look like you're being apolitical is just disgraceful. How dumb do you think we are?!
-I guess for me, the issue is that this is a question where _I need the correct answer in order to decide whether or not to cut my dick off_. Let me explain.
+-----
-[TODO: people have an incentive to fight over pronouns insofar as it's a "wedge" for more substantive issues]
+[TODO: not the woke position—it's an incoherent position]
+
+-----
[TODO: "Can't imagine a sympathetic protagonist"—lies, imagine a rape victim]
-[TODO: I need the correct answer]
+-----
+
+[TODO: people have an incentive to fight over pronouns insofar as it's a "wedge" for more substantive issues]
+
+----
+
+I guess for me, the issue is that this is a question where _I need the correct answer in order to decide whether or not to cut my dick off_. Let me explain.
+
+
+
+-----
[TODO:
* "If there were unspeakable arguments against, we couldn't talk about them"—okay, then you and your rationalists are frauds
* work in the LambdaMOO anecdote where appropriate
* singular they for named individuals undermined indefinite singular 'they'
- • not the woke position—it's an incoherent position
* some people have complained that my writing is too long, but when your interlocutors will go to the absurd length of _denying that the association of "she" with females_
My subsequent difficulty in writing the required papers for that course weighed on my soul. The failure to live up to expectations would have been shameful for any course, but as a _male_ squandering the privilege of being allowed to take "Introduction to Feminisms", it was simply unbearable. Unable to reach the prescribed word count for the final paper, I had a hysterical nervous breakdown at the end of the quarter, crying and screaming for hours, "I betrayed them; I betrayed them." (The professor and the T.A., who were kind and deserved better than to have to teach a male who _couldn't write_.)
-Ironically, in the inferno of shame over having betrayed my mandate to the University, my attitude towards school flipped practically overnight. I had never been the most _diligent_ student, but I had mostly accepted the duty of getting an "education": I didn't always do my homework, but when I didn't, I at least felt guilty about it. But suddenly, the difference between schooling-as-education and actual _learning_ became distinct. I had _always_ been a voracious reader; for years, I had been filling little pocket notebooks with my own thoughts—clearly, school itself couldn't take credit for everything I knew. I took a leave of absence from the University and went back to my (previously, "summer") job at the supermarket, with the intention of being an explicit autodidact. I had always learned from books "in passing", in my "free time", but now I would give it my
-
-
-
+Ironically, in the inferno of shame over having betrayed my mandate to the University, my attitude towards school flipped practically overnight. I had never been the most _diligent_ student, but I had mostly accepted the duty of getting an "education": I didn't always do my homework, but when I didn't, I at least felt guilty about it. But suddenly, the difference between schooling-as-education and actual _learning_ became distinct. I had _always_ been a voracious reader; for years, I had been filling little pocket notebooks with my own thoughts—clearly, school itself couldn't take credit for everything I knew. I took a leave of absence from the University and went back to my (previously, "summer") job at the supermarket, with the intention of being an explicit autodidact. I had always learned from books "in passing", in my "free time", but now I would give it
That part of my life is behind me now—not because I won my ideological war against institutionalized schooling, but because I _escaped_ to a different world where that war is no longer relevant. My autodidactic romance had already included some amount of computer programming, and taking a [9-week web development bootcamp](https://www.appacademy.io/) leveled up my skills and self-confidence far enough for me to easily find a well-paying software development job. (As with the supermarket, the code bootcamp didn't feel dysfunctional and oppressive in the way that school did, precisely _because_ no one cares if you graduated from code bootcamp; it was very clear that the focus was on acquiring skill at the craft, rather than obeying the dictates of an Authority.) So I went on to live happily—if not ever after, then at least for a brief, beautiful moment from 2014 to mid-2016.
+-----
+
But that was just my good fortune. There are others who weren't so lucky, who are still suffering in mind-slavery under Authority in the world of schools I left behind. [TODO: transition sentences ...]
We could imagine someone sympathetic to my plight in school deciding that my problem was a psychological condition called "student dysphoria"—discomfort with one's assigned social role of student. We could imagine a whole political movement to help sufferers of student dysphoria by _renaming_ everything: instead of a "student", I could be a "research associate", instead of taking "classes", I could attend "research seminars"—all while the _substance_ of my daily working conditions and social expectations remained the same.
I don't think this would be helping me. When I was angry about being in school, it wasn't because of _the word_ "student"—it was because I wanted more autonomy and I wanted more respect for my intellectual initiative. Changing the words without granting me the autonomy and respect I craved wouldn't be solving my _actual_ problem. It would probably make things _worse_ by sabotaging the concepts and language I needed to _articulate_ what my problem was.
-Likewise, being a "student" would have been fine in a world where students got more autonomy—a world where there was a collective understanding that courses are a supplement or pragmatically useful guidepost to one's studies, rather than course grades being _the whole thing_. I'm happy to learn from the masters. That's what textbooks _are_. I wasn't _delusional_ about doing novel original research.
-
+Likewise, being a "student" would have been fine in a world where students got more autonomy—a world where there was a collective understanding that courses are a supplement or pragmatically useful guidepost to one's studies, rather than course grades being _the whole thing_. I'm happy to learn from the masters: that's what textbooks _are_. I wasn't _delusional_ about doing novel original research.
[TODO: being a "student" would be fine in a world where students got more autonomy; I'm happy to learn from masters—that's what textbooks are; I wasn't delusional about doing original research; my pain and offsense wasn't "fake" just because it was game-theoretic]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff