_It was a compliment!_ That poor receptionist was almost certainly thinking of [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) or [Eddie Izzard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Izzard), rather than being hateful and trying to hurt.
-The author should have graciously accepted the compliment, and done something to pass better next time. The horror of trans culture is that it's impossible to imagine any of these people doing that—of noticing that they're behaving like a TERF's stereotype of a narcissistic, gaslighting MtT and snapping out of it.
+The author should have graciously accepted the compliment, and done something to pass better next time. The horror of trans culture is that it's impossible to imagine any of these people doing that—of noticing that they're behaving like a TERF's hostile stereotype of a narcissistic, gaslighting MtT and snapping out of it.
I want a shared cultural understanding that the _correct_ way to ameliorate the genuine sadness of people not being perceived the way they prefer is through things like _better and cheaper facial feminization surgery_, not _[emotionally blackmailing](/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/) people out of their ability to report what they see_. I don't _want_ to reliniqush [my ability to notice what women's faces look like](/papers/bruce_et_al-sex_discrimination_how_do_we_tell.pdf), even if that means noticing that mine isn't; if I'm sad that it isn't, I can endure the sadness if the alternative is _forcing everyone in my life to doublethink around their perceptions of me_.
And if that's too much to expect of the general public—
-And it's too much to expect of garden-variety "rationalists" to figure out on their own without prompting from their betters—
+And it's too much to expect garden-variety "rationalists" to figure out on their own without prompting from their betters—
-Then I would have at least hoped Eliezer Yudkowsky to be _in favor of_ rather than _against_ his faithful students having these very basic capabilities for reflection, self-observation, and ... _speech_?
+Then I would have at least expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to be _in favor of_ rather than _against_ his faithful students having these very basic capabilities for reflection, self-observation, and ... _speech_?
+I would have expected Eliezer Yudkowsky to not _actively try to transform me into a Jane Austen character_.
+[TODO section: rats from the Scott Alexander era will protest that I'm being uncharitable—failure of perspective taking; but I'm not complaining about Yudkowsky's subjective experience; I'm talking about a very clear pattern of behavior that's gone on for _years_]
+[TODO: let's recap]
+[TODO: the important thing is not being put in a box]
-[TODO: in the context of elite Anglosphere culture in 2016–2022; it should be clear that defenders of reason need to be able to push back and assert that biological sex is real; other science communicators like
+[TODO section stakes, cooperation
+
+> [_Perhaps_, replied the cold logic](https://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-good). _If the world were at stake._
+>
+> _Perhaps_, echoed the other part of himself, _but that is not what was actually happening._
+
+I could forgive him for taking a shit on d4 of my chessboard (["at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women"](https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10154078468809228)). I could even forgive him for subsequently taking a shit on e4 of my chessboard (["you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word [...]"](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1067198993485058048)) as long as he wiped most of the shit off afterwards, even though, really, I would have expected someone so smart to take a hint after the incident on d4.
+But if he's _then_ going to take a shit on c3 of my chessboard ("the simplest and best protocol is, '"He" refers to the set of people who have asked us to use "he" [...]'")
+the turd on c3 is a pretty big likelihood ratio
-[Dawkins can see it.](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments) [Jerry Coyne can see it.](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2018/12/11/once-again-why-sex-is-binary/)
+]
+[TODO: in the context of elite Anglosphere culture in 2016–2022; it should be clear that defenders of reason need to be able to push back and assert that biological sex is real; other science communicators like
+[Dawkins can see it.](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/richard-dawkins-loses-humanist-of-the-year-trans-comments) [Jerry Coyne can see it.](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2018/12/11/once-again-why-sex-is-binary/)]
https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1404821285276774403
> It is not trans-specific. When people tell me I helped them, I mostly believe them and am happy.
-
]
+
[TODO:
And the thing where David Xu interprets criticism of Eliezer as me going "full post-rat"?! https://twitter.com/davidxu90/status/1435106339550740482
-> Also: speaking as someone who's read and enjoyed your LW content, I do hope this isn't a sign that you're going full post-rat. It was bad enough when QC did it (though to his credit QC still has pretty decent Twitter takes, unlike most post-rats).
-
-]
+> Also: speaking as someone who's read and enjoyed your LW content, I do hope this isn't a sign that you're going full post-rat. It was bad enough when QC did it (though to his credit QC still has pretty decent Twitter takes, unlike most post-rats).]
I _never_ expected to end up arguing about something so _trivial_ as the minutiae of pronoun conventions (which no one would care about if historical contingencies of the evolution of the English language hadn't made them a Schelling point and typographical attack surface for things people do care about). The conversation only ended up here after a series of derailings. At the start, I was _trying_ to say something substantive about the psychology of straight men who wish they were women.
Does ... does he expect us not to _notice_? Or does he think that "everybody knows"?
-But I don't think that everybody knows. So I'm telling you.
-
-[TODO PARAGRAPH chessboard analogy
-
-playing on a different chessboard—I would be fine with it if he didn't shit on my chessboard. But my shitting on his chessboard
-
-I could forgive him for taking a shit on d4 of my chessboard ("at least 20% of the ones with penises are actually women"). I could even forgive him for subsequently taking a shit on e4 of my chessboard ([TODO linky-quotey not standing in defense of truth]) as long as he wiped most of the shit off afterwards ([TODO linky-quotey clarification]), even though, really, I would have expected someone so smart to take a hint after the incident on d4. But if he's _then_ going to take a shit on c3 of my chessboard ([TODO linkey-quotey normative meaning of 'he']) ... at _that_ point, it's hard for me to consider him as neutrally playing on a different chessboard, rather than actively trying to shit on mine; the turd on c3 is a pretty big likelihood ratio in favor of the latter hypothesis.
-
-]
-
[TODO: the dolphin war, our thoughts about dolphins are literally downstream from Scott's political incentives in 2014; this is a sign that we're a cult]
[TODO: the Death With Dignity era]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff