Discord: LemonUniverse (lemonuniverse). Reddit: u/Smack-works. Substack: The Lost Jockey. About my situation: here.
I wrote some worse posts before 2024 because I was very uncertain how the events may develop.
Agree that neopronouns are dumb. Wikipedia says they're used by 4% LGBTQ people and criticized both within and outside the community.
But for people struggling with normal pronouns (he/she/they), I have the following thoughts:
Employees get paid, which kinda automatically reduces their free speech, because saying the wrong words can make them stop getting paid. (...) Employment is really a different situation. You get laws, and recommendations of your legal department; there is not much anyone can do about that.
I'm not familiar with your model of free speech (i.e. how you imagine free speech working if laws and power balances were optimal). People who value free speech usually believe that free speech should have power above money and property, to a reasonable degree. What's "reasonable" is the crux.
I think in situations where people work together on something unrelated to their beliefs, prohibiting to enforce a code of conduct is unreasonable. Because respect is crucial for the work environment and protecting marginalized groups. I assume people who propose to "call everyone they" or "call everyone by proper name" realize some of that.
If I let people use my house as a school, but find out that a teacher openly doesn't respect minority students (by rejecting to do the smallest thing for them), I'm justified to not let the teacher into my house.
I do not talk about people's past for no good reason, and definitely not just to annoy someone else. But if I have a good reason to point out that someone did something in the past, and the only way to do that is to reveal their previous name, then I don't care about the taboo.
I just think "disliking deadnaming under most circumstances = magical thinking, like calling Italy Rome" was a very strong, barely argued/explained opinion. In tandem with mentioning delusion (Napoleon) and hysteria. If you want to write something insulting, maybe bother to clarify your opinions a little bit more? Like you did in our conversation.
I think there should be more spaces where controversial ideas can be debated. I'm not against spaces without pronoun rules, just don't think every place should be like this. Also, if we create a space for political debate, we need to really make sure that the norms don't punish everyone who opposes centrism & the right. (Over-sensitive norms like "if you said that some opinion is transphobic you're uncivil/shaming/manipulative and should get banned" might do this.) Otherwise it's not free speech either. Will just produce another Grey or Red Tribe instead of Red/Blue/Grey debate platform.
I do think progressives underestimate free speech damage. To me it's the biggest issue with the Left. Though I don't think they're entirely wrong about free speech.
For example, imagine I have trans employees. Another employee (X) refuses to use pronouns, in principle (using pronouns is not the same as accepting progressive gender theories). Why? Maybe X thinks my trans employees live such a great lie that using pronouns is already an unacceptable concession. Or maybe X thinks that even trying to switch "he" & "she" is too much work, and I'm not justified in asking to do that work because of absolute free speech. Those opinions seem unnecessarily strong and they're at odds with the well-being of my employees, my work environment. So what now? Also, if pronouns are an unacceptable concession, why isn't calling a trans woman by her female name an unacceptable concession?
Imagine I don't believe something about a minority, so I start avoiding words which might suggest otherwise. If I don't believe that gay love can be as true as straight love, I avoid the word "love" (in reference to gay people or to anybody) at work. If I don't believe that women are as smart as men, I avoid the word "master" / "genius" (in reference to women or anybody) at work. It can get pretty silly. Will predictably cost me certain jobs.
I'll describe my general thoughts, like you did.
I think about transness in a similar way to how I think about homo/bisexuality.
My thoughts about transness specifically:
When I compare your opinion to mine, most of my confusion is about two things: what exactly do you see as an empirical question? how does the answer (or its absence) affect our actions?
Zack insists that Blanchard is right, and that I fail at rationality if I disagree with him. People on Twitter and Reddit insist that Blanchard is wrong, and that I fail at being a decent human if I disagree with them. My opinion is that I have no comparative advantage at figuring out who is right and who is wrong on this topic, or maybe everyone is wrong, anyway it is an empirical question and I don't have the data. I hope that people who have more data and better education will one day sort it out, but until that happens, my position firmly remains "I don't know (and most likely neither do you), stop bothering me".
I think we need to be careful to not make a false equivalence here:
2A is kinda tangential to 1. So is this really a case of competing theories? I think uncertainty should make one skeptical of Blanchard work's implications rather than make one skeptical about respecting trans people.
(Note that this is about the representatives, not the people being represented. Two trans people can have different opinions, but you are required to believe the woke one and oppose the non-woke one.) Otherwise, you are transphobic. I completely reject that.
Two homo/bisexuals can have different opinions on what's "true homo/bisexuality" is too. Some opinions can be pretty negative. Yes, that's inconvenient, but that's just an expected course of events.
Shortly: disagreement is not hate. But it often gets conflated, especially in environments that overwhelmingly contain people of one political tribe.
I feel it's just the nature of some political questions. Not in all questions, not in all spaces you can treat disagreement as something benign.
But if there is a person who actually feels dysphoria from not being addressed as "ve" (someone who would be triggered by calling them any of: "he", "she", or "they"), then I believe that this is between them and their psychiatrist, and I want to be left out of this game.
Agree. Also agree that lynching for accidental misgendering is bad.
(That's when you get the "attack helicopters" as an attempt to point out the absurdity of the system.)
I'm pretty sure the helicopter argument began as an argument against trans people, not as an argument against weird-ass novel pronouns.
Draft of a future post, any feedback is welcome. Continuation of a thought from this shortform post.
(picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing_Hands)
There's an alignment-related problem: how do we make an AI care about causes of a particular sensory pattern? What are "causes" of a particular sensory pattern in the first place? You want the AI to differentiate between "putting a real strawberry on a plate" and "creating a perfect illusion of a strawberry on a plate", but what's the difference between doing real things and creating perfect illusions, in general?
(Relevant topics: environmental goals; identifying causal goal concepts from sensory data; "look where I'm pointing, not at my finger"; Pointers Problem; Eliciting Latent Knowledge; symbol grounding problem; ontology identification problem.)
I have a general answer to those questions. My answer is very unfinished. Also it isn't mathematical, it's philosophical in nature. But I believe it's important anyway. Because there's not a lot of philosophical or non-philosophical ideas about the questions above. With questions like these you don't know where to even start thinking, so it's hard to imagine even a bad answer.
Observation 1. Imagine you come up with a model which perfectly predicts your sensory experience (Predictor). Just having this model is not enough to understand causes of a particular sensory pattern, i.e. differentiate between stuff like "putting a real strawberry on a plate" and "creating a perfect illusion of a strawberry on a plate".
Observation 2. Not every Predictor has variables which correspond to causes of a particular sensory pattern. Not every Predictor can be used to easily derive something corresponding to causes of a particular sensory pattern. For example, some Predictors might make predictions by simulating a large universe with a superintelligent civilization inside which predicts your sensory experiences. See "Transparent priors".
So, what are causes of a particular sensory pattern?
"Recursive Sensory Models" (RSMs).
I'll explain what an RSM is and provide various examples.
An RSM is a sequence of N models (Model 1, Model 2, ..., Model N) for which the following two conditions hold true:
The second bullet point is kinda the most important one, but it's very underspecified. So you can only get a feel for it through looking at specific examples.
Core claim: when the two conditions hold true, the RSM contains easily identifiable "causes" of particular sensory patterns. The two conditions are necessary and sufficient for the existence of such "causes". The universe contains "causes" of particular sensory patterns to the extent to which statistical laws describing the patterns also describe deeper laws of the universe.
Imagine you're looking at a landscape with trees, lakes and mountains. You notice that none of those objects disappear.
It seems like a good model: "most objects in the 2D space of my vision don't disappear". (Model 1)
But it's not perfect. When you close your eyes, the landscape does disappear. When you look at your feet, the landscape does disappear.
So you come up with a new model: "there is some 3D space with objects; the space and the objects are independent from my sensory experience; most of the objects don't disappear". (Model 2)
Model 2 is better at predicting the whole of your sensory experience.
However, note that the "mathematical ontology" of both models is almost identical. (Both models describe spaces whose points can be occupied by something.) They're just applied to slightly different things. That's why "recursion" is in the name of Recursive Sensory Models: an RSM reveals similarities between different layers of reality. As if reality is a fractal.
Intuitively, Model 2 describes "causes" (real trees, lakes and mountains) of sensory patterns (visions of trees, lakes and mountains).
You notice that most visible objects move smoothly (don't disappear, don't teleport).
"Most visible objects move smoothly in a 2D/3D space" is a good model for predicting sensory experience. (Model 1)
But there's a model which is even better: "visible objects consist of smaller and invisible/less visible objects (cells, molecules, atoms) which move smoothly in a 2D/3D space". (Model 2)
However, note that the mathematical ontology of both models is almost identical.
Intuitively, Model 2 describes "causes" (atoms) of sensory patterns (visible objects).
Imagine you're alone in a field with rocks of different size and a scale model of the whole environment. You've already learned object permanence.
"Objects don't move in space unless I push them" is a good model for predicting sensory experience. (Model 1)
But it has a little flaw. When you push a rock, the corresponding rock in the scale model moves too. And vice-versa.
"Objects don't move in space unless I push them; there's a simple correspondence between objects in the field and objects in the scale model" is a better model for predicting sensory experience. (Model 2)
However, note that the mathematical ontology of both models is identical.
Intuitively, Model 2 describes a "cause" (the scale model) of sensory patterns (rocks of different size being at certain positions). Though you can reverse the cause and effect here.
If you put your hand on a hot stove, you quickly move the hand away. Because it's painful and you don't like pain. This is a great model (Model 1) for predicting your own movements near a hot stove.
But why do other people avoid hot stoves? If another person touches a hot stove, pain isn't instantiated in your sensory experience.
Behavior of other people can be predicted with this model: "people have similar sensory experience and preferences, inaccessible to each other". (Model 2)
However, note that the mathematical ontology of both models is identical.
Intuitively, Model 2 describes a "cause" (inaccessible sensory experience) of sensory patterns (other people avoiding hot stoves).
Imagine yourself in a universe where your sensory experience is produced by very simple, but very chaotic laws. Despite the chaos, your sensory experience contains some simple, relatively stable patterns. Purely by accident.
In such universe, RSMs might not find any "causes" underlying particular sensory patterns (except the simple chaotic laws).
But in such case there are probably no "causes".
Napoleon is merely an argument for "just because you strongly believe it, even if it is a statement about you, does not necessarily make it true".
When people make arguments, they often don't list all of the premises. That's not unique to trans discourse. Informal reasoning is hard to make fully explicit. "Your argument doesn't explicitly exclude every counterexample" is a pretty cheap counter-argument. What people experience is important evidence and an important factor, it's rational to bring up instead of stopping yourself with "wait, I'm not allowed to bring that up unless I make an analytically bulletproof argument". For example, if you trust someone that they feel strongly about being a woman, there's no reason to suspect them of being a cosplayer who chases Twitter popularity.
I expect that you will disagree with a lot of this, and that's okay; I am not trying to convince you, just explaining my position.
I think I still don't understand the main conflict which bothers you. I thought it was "I'm not sure if trans people are deluded in some way (like Napoleons, but milder) or not". But now it seems like "I think some people really suffer and others just cosplay, the cosplayers take something away from true sufferers". What is taken away?
Even if we assume that there should be a crisp physical cause of "transness" (which is already a value-laden choice), we need to make a couple of value-laden choices before concluding if "being trans" is similar to "believing you're Napoleon" or not. Without more context it's not clear why you bring up Napoleon. I assume the idea is "if gender = hormones (gender essentialism), and trans people have the right hormones, then they're not deluded". But you can arrive at the same conclusion ("trans people are not deluded") by means other than gender essentialism.
I assume that for trans people being trans is something more than mere "choice"
There doesn't need to be a crisp physical cause of "transness" for "transness" to be more than mere choice. There's a big spectrum between "immutable physical features" and "things which can be decided on a whim".
If you introduce yourself as "Jane" today, I will refer to you as "Jane". But if 50 years ago you introduced yourself as "John", that is a fact about the past. I am not saying that "you were John" as some kind of metaphysical statement, but that "everyone, including you, referred to you as John" 50 years ago, which is a statement of fact.
This just explains your word usage, but doesn't make a case that disliking deadnaming is magical thinking.
I've decided to comment because bringing up Napoleon, hysteria and magical thinking all at once is egregiously bad faith. I think it's not a good epistemic norm to imply something like "the arguments of the outgroup are completely inconsistent trash" without elaborating.
There are people who feel strongly that they are Napoleon. If you want to convince me, you need to make a stronger case than that.
It's confusing to me that you go to "I identify as an attack helicopter" argument after treating biological sex as private information & respecting pronouns out of politeness. I thought you already realize that "choosing your gender identity" and "being deluded you're another person" are different categories.
If someone presented as male for 50 years, then changed to female, it makes sense to use "he" to refer to their first 50 years, especially if this is the pronoun everyone used at that time. Also, I will refer to them using the name they actually used at that time. (If I talk about the Ancient Rome, I don't call it Italian Republic either.) Anything else feels like magical thinking to me.
The alternative (using new pronouns / name) makes perfect sense too, due to trivial reasons, such as respecting a person's wishes. You went too far calling it magical thinking. A piece of land is different from a person in two important ways: (1) it doesn't feel anything no matter how you call it, (2) there's less strong reasons to treat it as a single entity across time.
Meta-level comment: I don't think it's good to dismiss original arguments immediately and completely.
Object-level comment:
Neither of those claims has anything to do with humans being the “winners” of evolution.
I think it might be more complicated than that:
Here's some things we can try:
I think the later is the strongest counter-argument to "humans are not the winners".
My point is that chairs and humans can be considered in a similar way.
Please explain how your point connects to my original message: are you arguing with it or supporting it or want to learn how my idea applies to something?
...
Can you expand on the this thought ("something can give less specific predictions, but be more general") or reference famous/professional people discussing it? This thought can be very trivial, but it also can be very controversial.
Right now I'm writing a post about "informal simplicity", "conceptual simplicity". It discusses simplicity of informal concepts (concepts not giving specific predictions). I make an argument that "informal simplicity" should be very important a priori. But I don't know if "informal simplicity" was used (at least implicitly) by professional and famous people. Here's as much as I know: (warning, controversial and potentially inaccurate takes!)
Zeno of Elea made arguments basically equivalent to "calculus should exist" and "theory of computation should exist" ("supertasks are a thing") using only the basic math.
The success of neural networks is a success of one of the simplest mechanisms: backpropagation and attention. (Even though they can be heavy on math too.) We observed a complicated phenomenon (real neurons), we simplified it... and BOOM!
Arguably, many breakthroughs in early and late science were sealed behind simple considerations (e.g. equivalence principle), not deduced from formal reasoning. Feynman diagram weren't deduced from some specific math, they came from the desire to simplify.
Some fields "simplify each other" in some way. Physics "simplifies" math (via physical intuitions). Computability theory "simplifies" math (by limiting it to things which can be done by series of steps). Rationality "simplifies" philosophy (by connecting it to practical concerns) and science.
To learn flying, Wright brothers had to analyze "simple" considerations.
Eliezer Yudkowsky influenced many people with very "simple" arguments. Rational community as a whole is a "simplified" approach to philosophy and science (to a degree).
The possibility of a logical decision theory can be deduced from simple informal considerations.
Albert Einstein used simple thought experiments.
Judging by the famous video interview, Richard Feynman likes to think about simple informal descriptions of physical processes. And maybe Feynman talked about "less precise, but more general" idea? Maybe he said that epicycles were more precise, but a heliocentric model was better anyway? I couldn't find it.
Terry Tao occasionally likes to simplify things. (e.g. P=NP and multiple choice exams, Quantum mechanics and Tomb Raider, Special relativity and Middle-Earth and Calculus as “special deals”). Is there more?
Some famous scientists weren't shying away from philosophy (e.g. Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr?, Erwin Schrödinger).
Please, share any thoughts or information relevant to this, if you have any! It's OK if you write your own speculations/frames.