And so, Alexander explains, the ancient Hebrews weren't _wrong_ to classify whales as a type of _dag_ (typically translated as _fish_), even though modern biologists classify whales as mammals and not fish, because the ancient Hebrews were more interested in distinguishing which animals live in the water rather than which animals are phylogenetically related. Similarly, borders between countries are agreed upon for a variety of pragmatic reasons, and can be quite convoluted—while there may often be some "obvious" geographic or cultural Schelling points anchoring these decisions, there's not going to be any instrinsic, eternal fact of the matter as to where one country starts and another begins.
-All of this is entirely correct—and thus, an excellent [motte](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) for the less honest half of _Slate Star Codex_ readers to appeal to when they want to disrupt and obfuscate discussions about empirical reality by insisting on [...]
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-Alexander goes on to attempt to use the categories-are-relative insight to rebut skeptics of transgenderedness: referring to trans people as their desired gender is a category boundary
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-Agreed so far—
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+All of this is entirely correct—and thus, an excellent [motte](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/) for the less honest half of _Slate Star Codex_ readers to appeal to when they want to obfuscate and disrupt discussions about empirical reality by insisting on bizarrely unnatural redefinitions of concepts.
+Alexander goes on to attempt to use the categories-are-relative-to-goals insight to rebut skeptics of transgenderedness:
+> I've seen one anti-transgender argument around that I take very seriously. The argument goes: we are rationalists. Our entire shtick is trying to believe what's actually true, not on what we wish were true, or what our culture tells us is true, or what it's popular to say is true. If a man thinks he's a woman, then we might (empathetically) wish he were a woman, other people might demand we call him a woman, and we might be much more popular if we say he's a woman. But if we're going to be rationalists who focus on believing what's actually true, then we've got to call him a man and take the consequences.
+>
+> Thus Abraham Lincoln's famous riddle: "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" And the answer: "Four—because a tail isn't a leg regardless of what you call it."
+>
+> [...]
+>
+> I take this argument very seriously, because sticking to the truth really is important. But having taken it seriously, I think it’s seriously wrong.
+>
+> An alternative categorization system is not an error, and borders are not objectively true or false.
-We can at least discuss _in detail_
+But this is just giving up _way_ too easily. The map is not the territory, and many very different kinds of maps can correspond to the territory in different ways (we have geographical maps, political maps, road maps, globes, _&c._), but that doesn't mean _no map is in error_. Rationalists can't insist on using the one true categorization system, because it turns out that—in all philosophical strictness—no such thing exists. But that doesn't release us from our sacred duty to describe what's actually true. It just leaves us faced with the _slightly more complicated_ task of describing the costs and benefits of different categorization systems with respect to different optimization criteria. There's no objective answer to the question as to whether we should pay more attention to an animals' evolutionary history or its habit—but given one criteria or the other, we can say definitively that whales _are_ mammals but they're also _dag_/water-dwellers. That there exists an element of subjectivity in what you choose to pay attention to, doesn't negate that there is a structured empirical reality to be described, and not all descriptions of it are equally compact.
+In terms of the Lincoln riddle: you _can_ call a tail a leg, but you can't stop people from _noticing_ that out of a dog's five legs, one of them is different from the others. You can't stop people from inferring decision-relevant implications from what they notice. (_Most_ of a dog's legs touch the ground, such that you'd have to carry the dog to the vet if one of them got injured, but the dog can still walk without the other, different leg.) And if people who work and live with dogs every day find themselves habitually distinguishing between the bottom-walking-legs and the back-wagging-leg, they _just might_ want _different words_ in order to _talk_ about what everyone is thinking _anyway_.
+The topic of exactly how to apply these philosophical insights to transgender identity claims is a deep and fascinating one of prime sociopolitical relevance in today's Society, a topic about which many things could be written in support of any number of views—which is why it's such a shame that Alexander doesn't apply his prodigious wit and eloquence to address the topic at all.
+Okay, that's not quite true. Alexander has one, and apparently only one, argument to make—namely, that accepting transgender identity claims benefits transgender people:
+> If I'm willing to accept an unexpected chunk of Turkey deep inside Syrian territory to honor some random dead guy—and I better, or else a platoon of Turkish special forces will want to have a word with me—then I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it’ll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.
+This is true in an uninteresting tautological sense: if you deliberately define your category boundaries in order to get the answer you want, you can get the answer you want, which is great for people who want that answer and people who don't want to hurt their feelings [(and who don't mind letting themselves get emotionally blackmailed)](/2017/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/).
+It's less interesting to people like rationalists—although apparenlty not all people who _self-identify_ as rationalists—who want to use concepts to _describe reality_.
+It's important to stress that this should _not_ be taken to mean that transgender identity claims should necessarily be rejected! Countless bad arguments can be made for true propositions as well as false ones, so the refutation of one argument
-You can call a tail a leg, but you can't stop people from _noticing_ that of a dog's five legs, one of them is different from the others, so different that people habitually distinguish between the walking-legs and the wagging-leg.
+------
+"Well," you say, sighing, "let's see what we can do." You pull out your notebook, ready to jot down, ideas, strategies—battle plans?
+"But," you caution, "I'd be lying if I told you it was going to be _easy_."
+------
OUTLINE—
* Link to Maria Catt's "Baby Jessica" essay (maybe write her fan mail and
ask her to put it back up again)
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/2017/Feb/if-other-fantasies-were-treated-like-crossdreaming/
Similarly, [discussion of borders]
[point out that legal fictions aren't always taken seriously by people who are trying to talk about the world, use "Europe" examples from acquaintance; Seeing Like a State]
[point out that Alexander agrees that some categories suck]
+
+two-types are relevant to trans child debate
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff