memoir: beating on the hair surgery example

diff --git a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
index d621597..4ab05b6 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
+++ b/content/drafts/a-hill-of-validity-in-defense-of-meaning.md
@@ -785,6 +785,8 @@ Let's recap.
 Yudkowsky writes:
 
 > 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.
+>
+> And I'm not happy that the very language I use, would try to force me to take a position on that; not a complicated nuanced position, but a binarized position, _simply in order to talk grammatically about people at all_.
 
 What does the "tossed into a bucket" metaphor refer to, though? I can think of many different things that might be summarized that way, and my sympathy for the one who does not like to be tossed into a bucket depends on a lot on exactly what real-world situation is being mapped to the bucket.
 
@@ -802,18 +804,18 @@ While piously appealing to the feelings of people describing reasons they do not
 
 So, I agree that a language convention in which pronouns map to hair color doesn't seem great, and that the people in this world should probably coordinate on switching to a better convention.
 
-But _given_ the existence of a convention in which pronouns refer to hair color, a demand to be refered to as having a hair color _that one does not in fact have_ seems pretty outrageous to me! The decision to get hair surgery does not _propagate backwards in time_. The decision to get hair surgery cannot be _imported from a counterfactual universe in which it is safer_. People who, today, do not have the hair color that they would prefer, are going to have to deal with that fact _as a fact_. 
-
+But _given_ the existence of a convention in which pronouns refer to hair color, a demand to be refered to as having a hair color _that one does not in fact have_ seems pretty outrageous to me! 
 
+It makes sense to object to the convention forcing a binary choice in the "halfway between two central points" case. That's a case of _genuine_ nuance brought on by a _genuine_ complication and challenge to a system that assumes discrete hair colors.
 
+But ... "plan to get hair surgery"? "Would get hair surgery if it were safer but for now are afraid to do so"? In what sense do these cases present a challenge to the discrete system and therefore call for complication and nuance? The decision to get hair surgery does not _propagate backwards in time_. The decision to get hair surgery cannot be _imported from a counterfactual universe in which it is safer_. People who, today, do not have the hair color that they would prefer, are, today, going to have to deal with that fact _as a fact_.
 
-[
-To this one might reply that I'm being uncharitable in my interpretation. The text of the post doesn't _say_ that people have a general right to prevent others from using sex categories to make inferences or decisions about them. 
+Is the idea that we want to use the same pronouns for the same person over time, so that if we know someone is planning to get hair surgery—that is, they have an appointment with the hair surgeon at this-and-such date—we should go ahead and switch their pronouns in advance? Okay, I can buy that.
 
+But extending that to the "would get hair surgery if it were safer" case is _absurd_. No one treats _conditional plans assuming speculative future advances in medical technology_ the same as actual plans. I don't think this case calls for any complicated nuanced position, and I don't see why Eliezer Yudkowsky would suggest that it would, unless—
 
-And the text of the post _does_ say, "It's not that no truth-bearing propositions about these issues can possibly exist." 
+Unless, at some level, Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn't expect his followers to deal with facts?
 
-]
 
 
 [TODO: student dysphoria—I hated being put in the box as student