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diff --git a/content/drafts/point-man.md b/content/drafts/point-man.md
index 6e542d6..0554fb6 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/point-man.md
+++ b/content/drafts/point-man.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Title: Point Man
-Date: 2021-03-01
+Date: 2021-03-08
 Category: commentary
-Tags: ideology, categorization, epistemology, language
+Tags: ideology, bullet-biting, epistemic horror
 Status: draft
 
 Chinese legend tells of a eunuch named Zhao Gao, a chancellor to the Second Emperor. The power-hungry Zhao Gao wanted to arrange a coup, but was worried that the other members of the imperial court wouldn't cooperate with his designs.
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ One day, Zhao Gao announced a horse was being given to the young Emperor as a gi
 
 Later, Zhao Gao arranged for the execution of the courtiers who said it was a deer, or were silent.
 
-It was all a test: the courtiers who agreed with Zhao Gao, even though what he said was absurd—precisely _because_ it was absurd—proved their loyalty to him, whereas the ones who spoke the plain truth revealed themselves as untrustworthy for his purposes: to agree with a true claim would be compatible with either loyalty or mere honesty, but to agree with absurdity leaves [no ambiguity about one's motives](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/12/15/motive-ambiguity/). From this story comes the Chinese [four-character idiom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu) _point deer make horse_, to deliberately misrepresent.
+It was all a test: the courtiers who agreed with Zhao Gao, even though what he said was absurd—[precisely _because_ it was absurd](https://spandrell.com/2015/06/03/the-purpose-of-absurdity/)—proved their loyalty to him, whereas the ones who spoke the plain truth revealed themselves as untrustworthy for his purposes: to agree with a true claim would be compatible with either loyalty or mere honesty, but to agree with absurdity leaves [no ambiguity about one's motives](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/12/15/motive-ambiguity/). From this story comes the Chinese [four-character idiom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu) _point deer make horse_, to deliberately misrepresent.
 
 I used to wonder: what was it like to be one of the courtiers who survived the test? Did they consciously think, "Well, I don't know _why_ Zhao Gao is calling this deer a horse, but he seems serious, so I'd better play along, too"—or did they trust Zhao Gao's words more than their own eyes, and manage to really believe themselves that it was a horse?
 
@@ -32,11 +32,11 @@ I see. So the [new norms](/2018/Oct/sticker-prices/) are optimized to convey inf
 
 Almost like ... a loyalty test?
 
-And the less intuitive it is, the better it works _as_ a loyalty test: referring to an obviously male person as _he_ merely reflects conventional usage and reveals no information about one's motives, whereas refering to an obvious male as _she_—or using singular _they_ for a named individual whose sex is apparent—extracts a cognitive cost, however slight—a cost [allies are more willing to pay than non-allies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory).
+And the less intuitive it is, the better it works _as_ a loyalty test: referring to an obviously male person as _he_ merely reflects conventional usage and reveals no information about one's motives, whereas referring to an obvious male as _she_—or using singular _they_ for a named individual whose sex is apparent—extracts a cognitive cost, however slight—a cost [allies are more willing to pay than non-allies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory).
 
 I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, of course; just the design signature of [cultural evolution](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/).
 
-In the begining, [Azathoth](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pLRogvJLPPg6Mrvg4/an-alien-god) created female and male, and the physical fact was called "sex", and the social recognition and implications thereof was called "gender"—the first day.
+In the beginning, [Azathoth](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pLRogvJLPPg6Mrvg4/an-alien-god) created female and male, and the physical fact was called "sex", and the social recognition and implications thereof was called "gender"—the first day.
 
 As a very rare biological anomaly, there have always been an extreme right tail of very masculine lesbians who fit into Society better as men and very feminine gay men who fit into Society better as women, and twentieth-century doctors developed medical interventions to aid them in this transformation. This worked pretty well.
 

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md b/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
index b5a6ee5..43717b9 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
@@ -42,4 +42,4 @@ the U.S. has much fewer mixed-race people than Brazil specifically because of in
 https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/09/28/white-men-invented-everything/
 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77093-z
 
-![](/images/covid_dag.svg)
+![hypothetical COVID causal graph](/images/covid_dag.svg)

diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt
index aa5a9bc..db42344 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/notes.txt
+++ b/notes/notes.txt
@@ -241,6 +241,7 @@ etymology fun fact: "male" comes from the Latin malus, meaning "bad"
 on a Facebook thread about female-dominated gym classes, a female acquaintance writes, "My class focuses on weightlifting and it's still all women (including one trans, oddly enough)." (You wouldn't say "oddly enough" if you actually believed that trans women are women!)
 
 This is so great (super-AGP 13th century Jewish narrative)
+https://web.archive.org/web/20160420122918/http://www.on1foot.org/text/even-bochan-kalonymus-ben-kalonymus
 http://www.on1foot.org/text/even-bochan-kalonymus-ben-kalonymus
 http://www.transtorah.org/PDFs/On-Becoming-A-Woman.pdf