Saturday morning check in; we can recover this!

The long confrontation is pretty far behind schedule; I succumbed to
despair and cheating on the netblock with the laptop yesterday
evening. I think not getting into any gear at all until 1330 set a
really bad tone for the day, but that getting a block done before 1000
(and not just stopping there as my "good deed for the day") will set a
good tone for the day and I will deserve a reward in the evening, when
I have 7 (at least) blocks done.

I've continued to be preoccupied by how I want to market this (and
what Yudkowsky will think) distracting me from writing, but now I
think I see a marketing solution that balances my needs: the Less
Wrong linkpost of pt. 3 can have a "Why I Don't Trust Eliezer
Yudkowsky's Intellectual Honesty" summary comment, and my Twitter
thread promoting the post can link to that comment (and tag
@ESYudkowsky, explaining that I had previously had him blocked for
efficiency reasons, but it seems good to tag him for this because "a
true friend stabs you in the front.")

But in order to stab, I must craft a blade.

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 29901e1..9f3d5b8 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
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ That's not the really egregious part of the story. The thing is, psychology is a
 
 But a striking pattern in my attempts to argue with people about the two-type taxonomy in late 2016 and early 2017 was the tendency for the conversation to get _derailed_ on some variation of, "Well, the word _woman_ doesn't necessarily mean that," often with a link to ["The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/), a 2014 post by Scott Alexander arguing that because categories exist in our model of the world rather than the world itself, there's nothing wrong with simply _defining_ trans people to be their preferred gender, in order to alleviate their dysphoria.
 
-After Yudkowsky had stepped away from full-time writing, Alexander had emerged as our subculture's preeminent writer. Most people in an intellectual scene "are writers" in some sense, but Alexander was the one "everyone" reads: you could reference a _Slate Star Codex_ post in conversation and expect people to familiar with the idea, either from having read it, or by osmosis, by other people having referenced the idea in conversation. The frequency with which "... Not Man for the Categories" was cited at me, seemed to suggest it had become our subculture's "party line" on trans issues.
+After Yudkowsky had stepped away from full-time writing, Alexander had emerged as our subculture's preeminent writer. Most people in an intellectual scene "are writers" in some sense, but Alexander was the one "everyone" reads: you could reference a _Slate Star Codex_ post in conversation and expect people to familiar with the idea, either from having read it, or by osmosis via other people having referenced the idea in conversation. The frequency with which "... Not Man for the Categories" was cited at me, seemed to suggest it had become our subculture's "party line" on trans issues.
 
 But the post is very wrong in very obvious ways. To be clear, it's true _that_ categories exist in our model of the world, rather than the world itself—categories are "map", not "territory"—and it's true that trans women might be women _with respect to_ some genuinely useful definition of the word "woman." However, Alexander goes much further, claiming that we can redefine gender categories _in order to make trans people feel better_:
 

diff --git a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
index 86e5df9..b206e72 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
+++ b/notes/a-hill-of-validity-sections.md
@@ -1037,3 +1037,5 @@ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mmHctwkKjpvaQdC3c/what-should-you-change-in-resp
 The HEXACO personality model considers "honesty" and "humility" a single factor
 
 I'm not usually—at least, not always—so much of a scrub as to play chess with a pigeon (which shits on the board and then struts around like it's won), or wrestle with a pig (which gets you both dirty, and the pig likes it), or dispute what the Tortise said to Achilles
+
+(You might group things together _on the grounds_ of their similarly positive consequences—that's what words like _good_ do—but that's distinct from choosing _the categorization itself_ because of its consequences.)