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Username comments on The horrifying importance of domain knowledge - Less Wrong
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It also seems to amount to arguing that we should take people's delusions and hallucinations at face value, as long as those are about there gender. It's also interesting that these are the only type of delusions society is, currently, expected to play along with.
If a man shows up claiming to be both Jesus and John Lennon his beliefs won't be taken seriously and he is likely to be directed towards treatment aimed at curing him of his delusion. On the other hand, if a man shows up claiming to be a woman, we are expected to take him at his word, disregard any other evidence to the contrary, and accommodate this delusion in all kinds of unreasonable ways.
Eh. In some subcultures people use that word in their own way. The more options you offer, the more people of various subcultures will be your clients.
What's the expected ROI for making all this effort to accommodate a tiny minority? And what of the ethical implications concerned with enabling what could very well be a mental illness?
How large is the investment ? Do websites need to have a gender field? Not including one would be a slight saving. It might make sense to just have an optional title field.
Knowing gender means that it's possible to use the proper pronoun. Having a lot of demographic information is also useful to understand user behavior better. You can show women different ads then men.
You could ask for preferred pronouns, and possibly take the risk of having a text field for pronouns that aren't on your list.
I have no idea whether you'd do better with ads that are targeted to preferred title and pronouns rather than to stated gender, but you might.