There’s a small cost to the confusion caused by your name leading readers to assume (with hopefully low confidence) that you’re female, and there’s a small cost to the confusion and effort required to actually change your username and update references to the new username.
I’d say that “shut up and multiply” says that here, on LessWrong, the cost of the confusion is VASTLY less than the cost of the effort you’d have to go through to sign up for a new username and explain the situation. So, Utilitarianism says that you should keep your name for The Greater Good.
The key here is that it’s not deceptive—you’re not intentionally misleading people, nor are you allowing a harmful confusion to persist. You’re doing nothing harmful or immoral, there’s just a tiny bit of confusion.
There’s a small cost to the confusion caused by your name leading readers to assume (with hopefully low confidence) that you’re female, and there’s a small cost to the confusion and effort required to actually change your username and update references to the new username.
I’d say that “shut up and multiply” says that here, on LessWrong, the cost of the confusion is VASTLY less than the cost of the effort you’d have to go through to sign up for a new username and explain the situation. So, Utilitarianism says that you should keep your name for The Greater Good.
The key here is that it’s not deceptive—you’re not intentionally misleading people, nor are you allowing a harmful confusion to persist. You’re doing nothing harmful or immoral, there’s just a tiny bit of confusion.