The idea of "swapping people" only makes sense if you believe in an immaterial soul. Then you could grab John's soul, and stick it into me, and grab my soul, and stick it into John, and now I am John, and John is me.
But if, like me, you think that you are a mathematical mind that is physically implemented on a human brain, this idea of "swapping people" is incoherent. There is no way for you to turn me into John or vice versa. If you rearranged all of my atoms into a perfect copy of John, there would be two Johns and I would be dead.
1
1Strong upvoted. Is it missing the ending, or
There is no evidence showing that trans women outperform cisgender women by any significant margin [...] trans women get well within the expected ranges for cis women within around 3-4 years.
A meta-analysis of 24 studies found that transwomen were still stronger and more muscular than ordinary women after 3 years of hormone therapy:
In transwomen, hormone therapy rapidly reduces Hgb [haemoglobin] to levels seen in cisgender women. In contrast, hormone therapy decreases strength, LBM [Lean Body Mass] and muscle area, yet values remain above that observed in cisgender women, even after 36 months. These findings suggest that strength may be well preserved in transwomen during the first 3 years of hormone therapy.
Also, it is hard to trust the article you linked as unbiased when it contains quotes like this:
The exclusion of trans individuals also insults the skill and athleticism of both cis and trans athletes.
Or this:
Finally, there is the problem of neither sex nor gender being true binaries. This makes it nearly impossible to make comparisons among these individuals when classified into superimposed categories.
This sort of muddying the waters ("everything is a spectrum, we can't compare groups") is not something you expect people to do when the winds of evidence are blowing in their favor.
Nevertheless, the paper does not claim that hormone therapy eliminates differences in strength. They stick to the obviously true claim that "many of the sex differences are reduced". From the conclusion:
While sex differences do develop following puberty, many of the sex differences are reduced, if not erased, over time by gender affirming hormone therapy. Finally, if it is found that trans individuals have advantages in certain athletic events or sports; in those cases, there will still be a question of whether this should be considered unfair, or accepted as another instance of naturally occurring variability seen in athletes already participating in these events.
Well, sort of. Your comment provides evidence for habryka's claim compared to a counterfactual of 0 commenters finding their way here from that thread, but it provides evidence against hybryka's claim compared to a counterfactual of 2 or more commenters finding their way here from that thread.
Overall rate of engagement remains low. It was stuck at 11 comments for 21 days before your comment, and has been stuck at 47 karma for at least the last 19 days. Karma and comments are imperfect proxies of readership, but they are what we have. In the counterfactual world where this post wasn't unlisted, I expect engagement would have been far higher.
Seems like we mostly cleared it up
Yes, your reply makes your position clear. I don't feel like taking the time to edit my comment, but thank you for offering to edit in any changes.
Also, you definitely have my sympathy for the amount of time you have burned on this! I would not want your job.
1This totally misrepresents what I said!
I don't think this is a fair accusation.
The thing I am saying here is that Said's engagements with Duncan in that comment thread are not the cause of me banning him. It doesn't say anything about Duncan's complaints which long preceded that engagement!
If that's your position, fine, but it does not straightforwardly follow from what you wrote. You were responding to Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel's comment:
The examples in this post don't seem compelling at all. One of the primary examples seems to be Duncan who comes off [from a distance] as thin-skinned and obscurantist, emotionally blowing up at very fair criticism.
This is my view too. I remember once trying (I think on Facebook) to gently talk him out of being really angry at someone for making what I thought was a reasonable criticism, and he ended up getting mad at me too.
You responded to Alexander (emphasis added):
I don't think I link to a single Duncan/Said interaction in any of the core narratives of the post. I do link the moderation judgement of the previous Said/Duncan thread, but it's not the bulk of this post.
Like none of these comments:
[image of comments]
link to any threads between Said and Duncan.
And the moderation judgement in the Said/Duncan also didn't really have much to do with Said's conduct in that thread, but with his conduct on the site in general.
You might still not find the examples compelling, but there is basically no engagement with Duncan that played any kind of substantial role in any of this.
Based on both your comment and the context, it looked like you were referring to Duncan/Said interactions in general, not to a specific thread.
I even clarify directly in the comments on this post:
Your clarification does not appear anywhere under Alexander's original top-level comment. The comments total over 70,000 words, so I do not think it is fair to accuse me of misrepresenting you because I missed a clarification elsewhere.
excluding datapoints about which author "counts" by your own lights, based on whether they played a role in the banning decision is confused, because no author complaints ended up load-bearing for the banning decision.
Fair enough. My true reason for not counting Duncan is that he appears to be an unusually sensitive individual, who often gets mad at people without good reason. I was quoting you to establish (as a non-controversial, "bipartisan" point) that Said's interactions with Duncan were not ban-worthy.
tl;dr: My recent Question post was censored[1] by habryka. The post was critical of habryka's decision to ban Said Achmiz on current evidence, and requested additional evidence.
I recently read through all 10,309 words of habryka's blog post explaining his decision to ban Said Achmiz. I also read through thousands of words of comments. I did not find the examples given of Said's behavior a compelling reason for a ban, but I did identify a key crux which would justify a ban:
Said has been by far the most complained user on the site, with many top authors citing him as a top reason for why they do not want to post on the site, or comment here
However, nowhere in the post or comments was I able to find a list of "many top authors" citing Said as a reason they no longer wish to post or comment on this site. Therefore, I created a Question post on my personal blog, hoping to crowd-source an answer to the question: "Which top authors did Said Achmiz drive away?" If such a list could be compiled, it would provide a much stronger and more succinct case for the ban than Habryka's original post did[2].
Habryka unlisted my Question post, meaning it is still accessible via the direct link but will no longer appear on the main page or my personal profile. He then reposted it as a comment under his original "Banning Said Achmiz" post. I believe this action breaks with standard LessWrong moderation guidelines for what is acceptable in a personal blogpost.
For instance, when I hover over the "Personal Blog" tag at the top of my post, a tooltip pops up which says, in part:
Members can write whatever they want on their personal blog. Personal blogposts are a good fit for:
- Meta-discussion of LessWrong (site features, interpersonal community dynamics)
And when I click that tag, it redirects to this guide which states:
Posts on practically any topic are welcomed on LessWrong[1].
The footnote in the quote states:
We will remove material of the following types:
- Calls for direct violence against others
- Doxing of people on the internet
- Material we are not legally able to host
- To a very limited degree, material that seriously threatens LessWrong’s long-term values, mission and culture.
Evidently, I cannot write "whatever I want" on my personal blog subject to the stated rules.
Habryka is the LessWrong dictator, and can make any exceptions to the rules that he wants. But he claims that preventing me from posting that question on my personal blog is nothing out of the ordinary:
The guidelines above are primarily about what kind of content we will delete, not about the exact ways we are going to list the content on the frontpage. I would never delete a post like this, and have indeed not done so!
It is true that suppression is a more mild form of censorship than deletion, but it is still censorship. My question is now buried at the bottom of a page with over 80,000 words of text (10,000 words in the blog post plus another 72,000 words of comments). How many people have time to read 80,000 words? What fraction of the exposure will the comment get, that the original question would have gotten were it not unlisted? 5 percent? 1 percent? 0.5 percent?
Habryka claims to believe that the comment will get more visibility than the original post would have:
My best guess is that it will get somewhat more visibility in the long-run as a result of being on the Said post, while getting a bit less visibility in the short run
I feel I am being gaslit. Again, how many people are going to read 72,000 words of comments? When I express my doubts, he offers to bet on it:
If we can find an operationalization, I would take a bet.
To the degree that karma is a proxy for number of readers, the now unlisted post is at 47 karma, and the repost is at 2 karma. I don't expect the repost to ever surpass the karma of the post, even though the post is now unlisted (if it were still listed, its total karma would no doubt be higher). If you think this is a bad proxy, I agree. The lack of good metrics means this is a bet that habryka cannot lose.
Having a single dictator who can ban anyone he wishes, is actually a good policy. (If a committee decides something, no one is responsible. Having a dictator makes power legible.) But when said dictator uses his power to suppress speech critical of his decisions, this is a problem. I would urge habryka to adopt the policy of Frederick the Great:
"My people and I … have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."
Edited To Add: I would have made this post on my personal blog, but Habryka did not want me to. He said I could post it here on my shortform, so that is what I have done. I expect this shortform post to get fewer views than a post on my personal blog would have gotten, so in addition to objecting to the original censorship I also object to the meta-censorship.
It is from the linked comment by Zack Davis. The original source is a Discord conversation between Zack and Scott.
The guidelines above are primarily about what kind of content we will delete, not about the exact ways we are going to list the content on the frontpage.
This is a Personal Blog post, which the guide states "Are not displayed by default on the homepage", unlike Frontpage posts which "Are displayed by default to all users". Therefore, unlisting my post does not affect the homepage, but it does prevent it from showing up on my user profile.
I would never delete a post like this, and have indeed not done so!
Yes, I appreciate that. The fact remains that I would like to post this on my Personal Blog, which you are not allowing.
My best guess is that it will get somewhat more visibility in the long-run as a result of being on the Said post
I very much doubt it will get more visibility in the long-run. Also, since I am not the author of the comment on the Said post, I will not be notified of replies to it.
Feel free to start a shortform somewhere with discussion about me moving this
I plan to do this within the next couple of days. We can continue the discussion there.
1
For the third passage, he was not comparing the USA in general with Germany in general. He was comparing the stagnation of progress in theoretical physics: