Are you claiming that Zack is claiming that there’s no such thing as gender? Or that there’s no objective thing? Or that there’s nothing that would show up in brain scans? I continue to not know what the basic original object-level disagreement is!
TekhneMakre
Ok. (I continue to not know what the basic original object-level disagreement is!)
I certainly haven’t read even a third of your writing about this. But… I continue to not really get the basic object-level thing. Isn’t it simply factually unknown whether or not there’s such a thing as men growing up with brains that develop like female brains? Or is that not a crux for anything?
Separately, isn’t the obvious correct position simply: there’s a bunch of objective stuff about the differences between men and women; there’s uncertainty about exactly how these clusters overlap / are violated in real life, e.g. as described in the previous paragraph; and separately there’s a bunch of conduct between people that people modulate depending on whether they are interacting with a man or a woman; and now that there are more people openly not falling neatly into the two clusters, there’s some new questions about conduct; and some of the conduct questions involve factual questions, for which calling a particular XY-er a woman would be false, and some of the conduct questions involve factual questiosn (e.g. the brain thing) for which calling a particular XY-er a woman would be true, and some of the conduct questions are instead mainly about free choices, like whether or not to wear a dress or whatever?
I mean, if person 1 is using the word “he” to mean something like “that XY-er”, then yeah, it’s false for them to say “he” of an XX-er. If person 2 is using the word “he” to mean something like “that person, who wants to be treated in the way that people usually treat men”, then for some XX-ers, they should call the XX-er “he”. This XX-er certainly might seek to decieve person 1; e.g. if the XX-er wants to be treated by person 1 the way person 1 treats XY-ers, and person 1 does not want to treat this XX-er that way, but would treat the XX-er this way if they don’t know the XX status, then the XX-er might choose to have allies say “he” in order to decieve person 1. But that’s not the only reason. One can imagine simply that everyone is like person 2; then an XX-er asking to be called “he” is saying something like “I prefer to not be flirted with by heterosexual men; I’d like people to accurately expect me to be more interested in going to a hackathon rather than going to a mall; etc.”, or something. I mean, I’m not at all saying there’s no problem, but… It’s not clear (though again, I didn’t read your voluminous writing on this carefully) who is saying what that’s wrong… Like, if there’s a bunch of conventional conduct that’s tied up with words, then it’s not just about the words’ meaning, and you have to actually do work to separate the conduct from the reference, if you want them to be separate.
It’s not just epistemic confusion that can be most easily corrected with good evidence and arguments. That’s what I think we’re talking about.
But these people are in control of most institutions in our society. It’s not a small problem.
I totally agree with what you say! … And that’s why I’m on the side of those against the system of conflict between groups of people with common interests amongst themselves, against the side of those in favor of that system.
That taking sides in this way, is paradoxical (cf. the paradox of intolerance), is why I asked:
How can those against the class system gain appropriate class consciousness without being thereby destroyed?
A key aspect of that is to not look away from the fact that there is a class struggle between those in favor of class struggle and those against it.
I think the key premise that you didn’t say you agree with, is this: that there are people who are opposed to sharing information, pointing out norm violations, justice in general; perspective synthesizing, pulling the rope sideways. Cf. http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/notes-on-the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x-2/
Jesus christ. Savages on lesswrong.
Well, I wrote about this here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tMtMHvcwpsWqf9dgS/class-consciousness-for-those-against-the-class-system
But the internet loves to downvote without explaining why...
Class consciousness for those against the class system
Ooh. That makes a lot of sense and is even better… I simply didn’t realize there were inline reacts! Kudos.
IDK the reasons.
I guess there’s a reason for not having it on top-level posts, but I miss having it on top-level posts.
“Trust” is like “invest”. It’s an action-policy; it’s related to beliefs, such as “this person will interpret agreements reasonably”, “this person will do mostly sane things”, “this person won’t breach contracts except in extreme circumstances”, etc., but trust is the action-policy of investing in plans that only make sense if the person has those properties.
Overall feels like it’s ok, but very frustrating because it feels like it could be so much better. But I don’t think this is mainly about the software of LW; it’s about culture more broadly in decay (or more precisely, all the methods of coordinating on visions having been corrupted and new ones not gaining steam while defending boundaries).
A different thing: This is a problem for everyone, but: stuff gets lost. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DtW3sLuS6DaYqJyis/what-are-some-works-that-might-be-useful-but-are-difficult It’s bad, and there’s a worldwide problem of indexing the Global Archives.
I appreciate these views being stated clearly, and at once feel a positive feeling toward the author, and also am shaking my head No. As others have pointed out, the mistake theory here is confused.
I think it’s not exactly wrong. The way in which it’s right is this:
If people doing AGI research understood what we understand about the existential risk of AGI, most of them would stop, and AGI research would go much slower.
In other words, most people are amenable to reason on this point, in the sense that they’d respond to reasons to not do something that they’ve been convinced of. This is not without exception; some players, e.g. Larry Page (according to Elon Musk), want AGI to take the world from humanity.
The way in which the mistake theory is wrong is this:
Many people doing AGI research are not trying, and in many cases trying not, to understand what we understand about AGI risk.
So it’s not just a mistake. It’s a choice, that choice has motivations, and those motivations are in conflict with our motivations, insofar as they shelter themselves from reason.
What do you mean? Surely they aren’t offering this for anyone who writes anything manicly. It would be nice if someone volunteered for doing that service more often though.
I think you’re right that it will take work to parse; it’s definitely taking me work to parse! Possibly what you suggest would be good, but it sounds like work. I’ll see what I think after the dialogue.
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?