AstroCJ comments on We are not living in a simulation - Less Wrong

-9 Post author: dfranke 12 April 2011 01:55AM

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Comment author: shokwave 13 April 2011 02:36:19PM *  3 points [-]

When someone makes a completely wrong assumption and a completely wrong deduction about you

But, dfranke didn't do these things. He made a completely correct assumption based on his knowledge of LessWrong's population, or on his prior for a random sample of the population. He didn't know anything about the downvoter except that they downvoted - he had to guess at the rest of their characteristics, he chose (again, possibly not entirely consciously) to guess at their gender in order to express himself the way he wished to.

If he had known he was speaking of a transgendered downvoter, you would be justified in being angry. As he did not, you should not be angry. Note that in the past, commenters have been corrected on their usage of male gendered pronouns when explicitly referring to other posters who do not appreciate that practice, and these corrections have been upvoted - as I believe Alicorn may have mentioned.

If you wish to criticize the practice of using gendered pronouns in common communication, you may do so; LessWrong is already partial to this argument, but it's not a community norm, so indignation is not the correct response.