A more likely explanation, it seems to me, is that a large part of early LW/sequences was militant atheism, with religion being the primary example of the low “sanity waterline”, and this hasn’t been explicitly disclaimed since, at best de-emphasized. So this space had done its best to repel conservatives much earlier than pronouns and other trans issues entered the picture.
I approve of the militant atheism, because there are just too many religious people out there, so without making a strong line we would have an Eternal September of people joining Less Wrong just to say “but have you considered that an AI can never have a soul?” or something similar.
And if being religious is strongly correlated with some political tribe, I guess it can’t be avoided.
But I think that going further than that is unnecessary and harmful.
Actually, we should probably show some resistance to the stupid ideas of other political tribes, just to make our independence clear. Otherwise, people would hesitate to call out bullshit when it comes from those who seem associated with us. (Quick test: Can you say three things the average Democrat believes that are wrong and stupid? What reaction would you expect if you posted your answer on LW?)
Specifically on trans issues:
I am generally in favor of niceness and civilization, therefore:
If someone calls themselves “he” or “she”, I will use that pronoun without thinking twice about it.
I disapprove of doxing in general, which extends to all speculations about someone’s biological sex.
But I also value rationality and free speech, therefore:
I insist on keeping an “I don’t know, really” attitude to trans issues. I don’t know, really. The fact that you are yelling at me does not make your arguments any more logically convincing.
No, I am not literally murdering you by disagreeing with you. Let’s tone down the hysteria.
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.
I specifically disagree on the point that if someone changes their gender, it retroactively changes their entire past. 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. I won’t correct you if you do that, but please do not correct me, or I will be super annoyed.
My biggest problem with the trans discourse is that it’s a giant tower of motte-and-baileys, and there’s no point where it’s socially acceptable to get off the crazy train.
Sure, at this point it seems likely that gender dysphoria isn’t an entirely empty notion. Implying that this condition might be in any way undesirable is already a red line though, with discussions of how much of it is due to social contagion being very taboo, naturally. And that only people experiencing bad enough dysphoria to require hormones and/or surgery could claim to be legitimately trans is a battle lost long ago.
Moving past that, there is non-binary, genderfluid, neo-genders, otherkin, etc, concepts that don’t seem to be plausibly based in some currently known crippling biological glitch, and yet those identities are apparently just as legitimate. Where does it stop? Should society be entirely reorganized every time a new fad gains traction? Should everybody questioning that be ostracized?
Then there’s the “passing” issue. I accept the argument that nowadays in most social situations we have no strong reasons to care about chromosomes/etc, people can successfully play many roles traditionally associated with the opposite sex. But sexual dimorphism is the entire reason for having different pronouns in the first place, and yet apparently you don’t even have to try (at all, let alone very hard) to “pass” as your chosen gender for your claim to be legitimate. What is the point? Here the unresolved tension between gender-critical and gender-affirming feminism is the most glaring.
Maybe, but Martin Randall and Matt Gilliland have both said that the trans explanation matches their personal experience, and Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees with the explanation as well. I have no insider knowledge and am just going off what community members say.
Do you have any particular reasons for thinking atheism is a bigger filter than pronouns and other trans issues?
It’s not clear what your position is. Do you think the contribution of pronouns and other trans issues is negligible? Slightly smaller than atheism? An order of magnitude smaller?
I suspect atheism is a non-negligible filter, but both smaller than trans issues, and less likely to filter out intelligent truth-seeking conservatives. Atheism is a factual question with a great deal of evidence in favor, and is therefore less politically charged. Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both said that the intellectual case for atheism is strong, and both remain very popular on the right.
I’d say that atheism had already set the “conservatives not welcome” baseline way back when, and this resulted in the community norms evolving accordingly. Granted, these days the trans stuff is more salient, but the reason it flourished here even more than in other tech-adjacent spaces has much to do with that early baseline.
Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both said that the intellectual case for atheism is strong, and both remain very popular on the right.
Sure, but somebody admitting that certainly isn’t the modal conservative.
I wouldn’t call the tone back then “conservatives not welcome”. Conservatism is correlated with religiosity, but it’s not the same thing. And I wouldn’t even call the tone “religious people are unwelcome”—people were perfectly civil with religious community members.
The community back then were willing to call irrational beliefs irrational, but they didn’t go beyond that. Filtering out people who are militantly opposed to rational conclusions seems fine.
A more likely explanation, it seems to me, is that a large part of early LW/sequences was militant atheism, with religion being the primary example of the low “sanity waterline”, and this hasn’t been explicitly disclaimed since, at best de-emphasized. So this space had done its best to repel conservatives much earlier than pronouns and other trans issues entered the picture.
I approve of the militant atheism, because there are just too many religious people out there, so without making a strong line we would have an Eternal September of people joining Less Wrong just to say “but have you considered that an AI can never have a soul?” or something similar.
And if being religious is strongly correlated with some political tribe, I guess it can’t be avoided.
But I think that going further than that is unnecessary and harmful.
Actually, we should probably show some resistance to the stupid ideas of other political tribes, just to make our independence clear. Otherwise, people would hesitate to call out bullshit when it comes from those who seem associated with us. (Quick test: Can you say three things the average Democrat believes that are wrong and stupid? What reaction would you expect if you posted your answer on LW?)
Specifically on trans issues:
I am generally in favor of niceness and civilization, therefore:
If someone calls themselves “he” or “she”, I will use that pronoun without thinking twice about it.
I disapprove of doxing in general, which extends to all speculations about someone’s biological sex.
But I also value rationality and free speech, therefore:
I insist on keeping an “I don’t know, really” attitude to trans issues. I don’t know, really. The fact that you are yelling at me does not make your arguments any more logically convincing.
No, I am not literally murdering you by disagreeing with you. Let’s tone down the hysteria.
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.
I specifically disagree on the point that if someone changes their gender, it retroactively changes their entire past. 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. I won’t correct you if you do that, but please do not correct me, or I will be super annoyed.
My biggest problem with the trans discourse is that it’s a giant tower of motte-and-baileys, and there’s no point where it’s socially acceptable to get off the crazy train.
Sure, at this point it seems likely that gender dysphoria isn’t an entirely empty notion. Implying that this condition might be in any way undesirable is already a red line though, with discussions of how much of it is due to social contagion being very taboo, naturally. And that only people experiencing bad enough dysphoria to require hormones and/or surgery could claim to be legitimately trans is a battle lost long ago.
Moving past that, there is non-binary, genderfluid, neo-genders, otherkin, etc, concepts that don’t seem to be plausibly based in some currently known crippling biological glitch, and yet those identities are apparently just as legitimate. Where does it stop? Should society be entirely reorganized every time a new fad gains traction? Should everybody questioning that be ostracized?
Then there’s the “passing” issue. I accept the argument that nowadays in most social situations we have no strong reasons to care about chromosomes/etc, people can successfully play many roles traditionally associated with the opposite sex. But sexual dimorphism is the entire reason for having different pronouns in the first place, and yet apparently you don’t even have to try (at all, let alone very hard) to “pass” as your chosen gender for your claim to be legitimate. What is the point? Here the unresolved tension between gender-critical and gender-affirming feminism is the most glaring.
Maybe, but Martin Randall and Matt Gilliland have both said that the trans explanation matches their personal experience, and Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees with the explanation as well. I have no insider knowledge and am just going off what community members say.
Do you have any particular reasons for thinking atheism is a bigger filter than pronouns and other trans issues?
It’s not clear what your position is. Do you think the contribution of pronouns and other trans issues is negligible? Slightly smaller than atheism? An order of magnitude smaller?
I suspect atheism is a non-negligible filter, but both smaller than trans issues, and less likely to filter out intelligent truth-seeking conservatives. Atheism is a factual question with a great deal of evidence in favor, and is therefore less politically charged. Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have both said that the intellectual case for atheism is strong, and both remain very popular on the right.
In the before-time of the internet, New Atheism was a much bigger deal than transgender issues.
I’d say that atheism had already set the “conservatives not welcome” baseline way back when, and this resulted in the community norms evolving accordingly. Granted, these days the trans stuff is more salient, but the reason it flourished here even more than in other tech-adjacent spaces has much to do with that early baseline.
Sure, but somebody admitting that certainly isn’t the modal conservative.
I wouldn’t call the tone back then “conservatives not welcome”. Conservatism is correlated with religiosity, but it’s not the same thing. And I wouldn’t even call the tone “religious people are unwelcome”—people were perfectly civil with religious community members.
The community back then were willing to call irrational beliefs irrational, but they didn’t go beyond that. Filtering out people who are militantly opposed to rational conclusions seems fine.