You can’t just use redefinitions to turn trans women similar to cis women.
What does this mean? It seems like if the original issue is something about whether to call an XY-er “she” if the XY-er asks for that, then, that’s sort of like a redefinition and sort of not like a redefinition… Is the claim something like:
Eliezer wants to redefine “woman” to mean “anyone who asks to be called ‘she’ ”. But there’s an objective cluster, and just reshuffling pronouns doesn’t make someone jump from being typical of one cluster to typical of the other.
Trans women start out much more similar to cis men than to cis women, and transitioning doesn’t do very much.
This one is a set of empirical, objective claims.… but elsewhere you said:
Focusing on brains seems like the wrong question to me. Brains matter due to their effect on psychology, and psychology is easier to observe than neurology.
Even if psychology is similar in some ways, it may not be similar in the ways that matter though, and in fact the ways that matter need not be restricted to psychology. Even if trans women are psychologically the same as cis women, trans women in women’s sports is still a contentious issue.
So I guess that was representing your viewpoint, not Zack’s?
What does this mean? It seems like if the original issue is something about whether to call an XY-er “she” if the XY-er asks for that, then,
My understanding of Zack’s position is that he fixated on this because it’s something with a clear right answer that has been documented in the Sequences, and that he was really just using this as the first step to getting the rationalist community to not make him transition.
that’s sort of like a redefinition and sort of not like a redefinition...
Arguably what “it is” depends on why people are doing it. Zack has written extensive responses to different justifications for doing it. I can link you a relevant response and summarize it, but in order to do that I need to know what your justification is.
This one is a set of empirical, objective claims.… but elsewhere you said:
The latter was representing my viewpoint whereas the former was an attempt at representing Zack’s viewpoint, but also I don’t think the two views are contradictory with each other?
What does this mean? It seems like if the original issue is something about whether to call an XY-er “she” if the XY-er asks for that, then, that’s sort of like a redefinition and sort of not like a redefinition… Is the claim something like:
This one is a set of empirical, objective claims.… but elsewhere you said:
So I guess that was representing your viewpoint, not Zack’s?
My understanding of Zack’s position is that he fixated on this because it’s something with a clear right answer that has been documented in the Sequences, and that he was really just using this as the first step to getting the rationalist community to not make him transition.
Arguably what “it is” depends on why people are doing it. Zack has written extensive responses to different justifications for doing it. I can link you a relevant response and summarize it, but in order to do that I need to know what your justification is.
The latter was representing my viewpoint whereas the former was an attempt at representing Zack’s viewpoint, but also I don’t think the two views are contradictory with each other?