(a stray thought from October 2016)
Erotic-target-location-erroneous is the uniquely best sexual orientation for rationalists—I mean intrinsically, not just because everyone has it.
"Obviously I socially gender him as male as per his preference."
"I wouldn't call it a preference exactly—"
"I gender him male as per his philosophical commitments."
"I'm not done with this incredibly creepy self-disclosure blog post about how the robot-cult's sacred text influenced my self-concept in relation to sex and gender, but maybe I should link you to the draft?" said the honest man. "Because it unblocks our model-sync by describing some of the autobiographical details …
(16 July 2017)
"Tomorrow! No coffee, no Facebook, no food—well, maybe some Soylent because the medication for my birth defect says to take with food, some kind of bioavailability thing—no low-quality internet reading, no TV ... just writing! The demons that haunt us are only powerful to the extent …
"You don't understand. Sure, you might make a few interesting abstract points here and there, but this isn't some masturbatory ivory-tower intellectual game to us. We're fighting for our existence here."
"Yes, you are. And so am I. I need simple language that carves reality at the joints in order …
"But like, maybe a better strategy than pretending not to notice that women are a different thing that I don't understand, might be to try to listen to them, and learn from them, and appropriate the good parts of what they have without literally insisting that we're instances of the …
"Can you believe people are calling my blog transphobic?! Me! That's like calling Christina Hoff Sommers an anti-feminist!"
"Um ... you know, that's actually a pretty good analogy. People like Sommers who agree with a one-sentence literal summary of feminism's goals, like 'women and men should have equal rights', but disagree …
"But surely a man such as yourself—"
"I'm nonbinary," interjected the other, holding up a name badge bearing a they/them/theirs sticker.
"Right, sorry," said Mark. "Surely a nonbinary man such as yourself—"
"Hi, my name is John, and my pronouns are he/him."
"Hi! My name is Mark, and I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient."
"I can understand why you might think that there are five lights—indeed, that would make a lot of things easier—but actually, there are only four lights. Yes, it's a little bit counterintuitive, and I know I got a little bit frustrated and said some things I now regret …
"I swear, if I read another word about Phineas Gage—and this goes double for David Reimer—I am going to scream. Why do science writers always recount the same illustrative case studies? Are they all just plagiarizing each other out of laziness, or could it really be that in …
"Likelihood ratios are good! Likelihood ratios are the only good thing!"
"I agree that likelihood ratios are good! In fact, I think we have a moral responsibility to look for clever strategies to make the likelihood ratios bigger! But at the same time, you know, priors."
"Priors?! How dare you …
"Mark, I can't quite place it, but you look ... different somehow."
"Oh yes, thanks for noticing. I'm experimenting with a nonstandard hormone balance. It's kind of like being transgender, except without the part where you delusionally claim to be a woman."
"Excuse me?"
"I said, 'It's kind of like being …
"I'm going to need to start watching more television, or pretty soon I'm going to run out of cosplay ideas."
"You could play male characters from your existing favorite shows."
(A withering silence serves to underscore the point willfully being missed.)
"The gender ratio at the conference was like, maybe twenty-to-one?" he said. "And I can't help but think, if I were braver—like you—I could help make the male-to-female ratio better—but only at the expense of making the trans-women-to-cis-women ratio worse."
"You mean, making the trans-women-to-cis-women ratio higher …
Laura is cuddling on the couch with her boyfriend Doyle at the latter's apartment, trading silly banter.
"Some of them might secretly be cats!" Doyle says.
"I might secretly be a cat," Laura says.
"Why would you say this? What about you is particularly cat-like?"
"Well, it's more of an …
"I've been getting this mild headachey sensation a lot the past few days, especially when, for example, standing up suddenly. What could—" (gasping excitedly) "Could it be the hormones actually doing something? Is this a girl headache?"
"Hm. The connection to activity sounds like a circulatory problem ... say, aren't blood …
"How goes?"
"I've been feeling a little bit of pectoral tenderness the past few days, which might mean that the anti-androgen is doing something!"
"Good ..."
"Notice how I said anti-androgen instead of spiro: that's because my model of your vocabulary predicted that you know what anti-androgen means, because I predict …
"Claiming that you don't care about anything but truthseeking may lead people to question whether your jokes were meant to convey that certain things were true. That line about 'cooperating with TERFy women who might reward me with sex and intimacy' in your post the other month is something I …