ymeskhout

• ymeskhout 1 Jun 2023 20:32 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  What moral view is leading you to think there’s any problem at all with enjoying a self-congratulatory narrative?

  It’s not any specific moral view that causes me concern, but rather how the entire edifice is organized. There’s likely no end to the specific moral principles I can cite which hit me on a visceral level which I, purportedly, feel very strongly about. This includes the revulsion against slavery, which in my case partly extends even to consensual labor arrangements that have a significant imbalance of power (this is most prominent for the hospitality industry in poor countries serving a much richer clientele).

  But when I contemplate how genetically identical I am to people from just a few hundred years ago, and when I see what those people felt strongly about, it’s reasonable for this to generate some pause on my end. Because what it demonstrates to me is that even the core visceral disgust I reflexively feel can’t be trusted. Nevertheless, I still rely heavily on this disgust reflex but it’s with the understanding that I’m engaging in fiction but have no better alternative.

• ymeskhout 31 May 2023 17:40 UTC

  3 points

  2

  in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  Thank you for your reply, you accurately summarized my argument.

  Regarding “objective” morality, I honestly would have no idea where to start, especially as an atheist. I was hoping my post would prompt some responses pushing back on this particular point. I’m not opposed towards working to discover what this “objective” morality would be, but given my argument above there should be significant caution that we’re not just slumbering into yet another self-congratulatory narrative. Along that same line, nothing I wrote above should imply that I lack curiosity, hopefully I established quite the opposite.

• ymeskhout 31 May 2023 0:46 UTC

  11 points

  0

  in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  You mix up your tenses in sneaky way, projecting bad aspects of the past onto the future:

  I think this would normally be an astute observation but in my case mixing up tenses has been a persistent source of frustration for my editors. Despite the scolding I get and my efforts to watch out for it, I screw this up constantly (I don’t know if this explains it but English is my third language and I mostly learned it in an ad-hoc manner). All I can say now is that the tense mix-up was an inadvertent error on my part. When I talk about which cultural values “will become” the dominant paradigm, I wasn’t referring to the future or present, but rather a jump forward in time from one past date to another (e.g. from 600 AD to 605 AD or whatever). Same when I talk about which code “will replicate”, it’s about a date in the past that is future from another date in the past. When I talk about “this community” I was referring to communities in the past that materially profited off of warfare.

  I’m normally really bad at conjugating verbs consistently, so the mixed up tenses should not be seen as evidence of any hidden messages. I don’t know if that clears up any ambiguity.

  You speak positively of violence through the lens of past societies that needed it, without disclaiming that it’s bad in a present-day lens

  You’re not the only one to make this criticism but I admit I’m confused by it. I’m generally an optimist about the human condition largely because of how personally thrilling and eternally grateful I am towards the steady obsolescence of violence as a solution in modern life. I think it’s a Good Thing™ that humans nowadays are significantly more inclined to favor peaceful cooperation over violent conquest. But if I had to include throat-clearing passages in between all my sentences (violence is bad! trade is good! slavery is bad! peace is good! etc.) I wouldn’t fault the reader who would find this patronizing and infantilizing.

  So in the passage you quoted above, I relay an observation that Men of Violence were “appropriately” praised by their community. All this means is that, purely from a base material gain, the community had a reason to praise conquerors who bring back stolen and looted riches. “Appropriately” here serves only to distinguish whether the community was acting arbitrarily or rationally; it was not at all intended to be praise for that conduct. The description here was fully intended to describe what is, not what ought. I’m reminded of a similar confusion regarding the “evolutionary benefits” of rape. Describing how sexual coercion can be a “successful” evolutionary strategy is not at all the same thing as arguing that rape is “good” or whatever. I would hope that this distinction is well established within these circles.

  I already worry too much about being overly wordy, so in the interest of brevity and also to reduce the risk of coming off as patronizing, I avoid repeating points I think are too obvious. So in this case, I didn’t find it necessary to repeatedly disclaim how much I dislike rape, slavery, and violence. The exclusion of my denunciations in my post should not be taken as evidence of endorsement.

• ymeskhout 30 May 2023 23:42 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  Kaj_Sotala’s interpretation of my post is absolutely correct.

  It promotes cynicism by painting an evocative series of images that encourage us to cast ourselves as George Washington (rather than as one of his 150 slaves) or as a powerful Bronze-age warrior (rather than as one of the women he just raped and murdered in his latest town-sacking), and thereby take a cynical stance toward our own modern-day morality because it’s just an arbitrary material fact that we were born as ourselves rather than as slaveholders and city-sackers.

  There’s an obvious reason I did not encourage anyone to view themselves as the victims; my assumption is that no one needs any convincing to agree being raped and murdered is awful. The second reason I did not focus on that perspective is because my argument was about how memeplexes achieve dominance, which means that the opinions of the historically oppressed is by definition irrelevant.

• ymeskhout 30 May 2023 21:56 UTC

  1 point

  −4

  in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  I acknowledge that you believe this is not worth your time and do not hold you to a response. That said it’s generally not helpful to assert a criticism and then refuse elaboration. Outsourcing that task only serves to highlight how deficient LLMs currently are at this task because of how distracted they get with ethical guardrails. Point no. 3 is exemplary of this problem because I already said that energy slaves are a crude comparison and already said I don’t support slavery. So this criticism essentially boils down to not having enough throat-clearing negative adjectives directly adjacent to any discussion of slavery.

• ymeskhout 30 May 2023 20:52 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  No, my argument is that morality is whatever replicates best. Often it means “doing what is good for the community” because a healthy community is in a better place to replicate its guiding values. But not always.

• ymeskhout 29 May 2023 17:20 UTC

  2 points

  −1

  in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  Can you be more specific about what exactly you find objectionable about my argumentation style?

  Regarding ‘patriarchy’, I don’t disagree that the word has muddled meaning nowadays but what other term would you recommend for me to use to describe the concept I wrote about?

• ymeskhout 29 May 2023 17:17 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

  >If morality was really the self-serving hypocritical thing as this article suggests, stealing would be considered moral.

  No because a community that condones stealing as moral would see itself bled dry. It’s not the pathway to good evolutionary fitness. The tension between what a gene “wants” and what the organism “wants” is well-documented within the field of evolution, and you can extrapolate the dynamic to a similar tension between what an individual “wants” and what the community “wants”. The best example of this is “kin selection” where an organism engages in altruistic behavior or even complete sacrifice to benefit their close relatives.

Mo­ral­ity is Ac­ci­den­tal & Self-Congratulatory

[Question] What are the limits of the weak man?

• ymeskhout 9 May 2023 15:54 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I concede that “females” is not 100% accurate in the context I was discussing but it felt like the least worst option. “Natural vagina haver” would be the most accurate label for the demographic I had in mind but it sounds distasteful. I’m open to ideas.

• ymeskhout 9 May 2023 1:38 UTC

  7 points

  2

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  Wow! I am so grateful for this comment and the transparency and candor you’ve written it with. I appreciate the time you took to write this out and I have some follow-up questions if you don’t mind.

  I have a strong impression that most people I encounter have this really strong desire to know whether the person they’re interacting with “is a man” or “is a woman”.

  Have you noticed any difference in people’s behavior depending on what gender category they perceive you as?

  Of those two options, there is clearly one that causes me to feel tremendous stress and sadness a whole lot of the time when I’m around other people, and another that causes me to feel mostly good and comfortable when I’m around other people.

  What is it about that perception by others that causes you so much stress? Is it because their perception comes pre-packaged along with some erroneous assumptions about you? (e.g. the pregnancy books assuming how you feel about your baby)

  And indeed, overall I feel more at home, cozy, resonant, happy, comfortable, when I rest my attention on the traditionally masculine elements of these frameworks, even though I also feel a lot of familiarity around many of the traditionally feminine elements as well.

  This might be impossible to answer but are you able to determine which way causation flows? What I mean by this is do you feel more connected to certain concepts because they are coded as masculine, or do you just feel that affinity with concepts that happen to be coded as masculine? You’ve lucidly and transparently described how your cognition is affected by your hormonal balance, and your strong aversion to your PMS mental state, so I’m wonder where this preference cleaves.

  It all feels wrong and weird to me.

  Similar question as above. Does the discomfort with aspects of your physiology stem from them being coded as feminine? Put another way, if you somehow had no concept of masculine/​feminine, would your physiology on its own still cause you discomfort?

• ymeskhout 8 May 2023 23:43 UTC

  11 points

  1

  in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  It seems that you think that “male/​female” should refer strictly to genetics while “man/​woman” should refer to gender identity, but I don’t think this a great convention: in everyday use, “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably.

  I am aiming to do the best I can in communicating with precision and I apologize for any missteps on my part. It’s certainly true that “woman” and “female” are often used interchangeably but I’ve seen this become the source of significant confusion and ambiguity. You are correct about how I use the two terms (although it’s more about social role than identity); that is the convention I’ve eventually settled upon and so far it has worked well in minimizing ambiguity.

  My working assumption about the word “female” is that it is much more heavily grounded within the context of reproductive capacity and the associated secondary characteristics (e.g. a livestock breeder ordering “females” from a supplier is not ambiguous in that context) which is why I used it.

  Given your greater familiarity with this space I trust your judgment that “natural females” would not be negatively received here, but I’m doubtful this would be the case outside of LW and it’s difficult to keep a vocabulary index updated across so many places. I also imagine that transmen and non-binary individuals would not appreciate being called “female”, but they’d appreciate “natural female” even less. With regards to “genetic females” my question would be “as opposed to what?” so my (weak) objection is mostly based on its ambiguity to me. I wouldn’t be confident that either terms would carry the meaning I intend.

  Either way, I was not privy to either of these alternate phrases before, so I hope it’s established that my use of “females” was not intended to be malicious. Language is imperfect and I’m trying to do the best I can in nevertheless communicating clearly.

• ymeskhout 6 May 2023 19:18 UTC

  10 points

  0

  in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I appear to have angered and/​or offended you and I apologize for that. I don’t believe my post had much of an argument, it was more an attempt to explain a position you expressed curiosity about. I apologize for misinterpreting anything.

  I used “females” to minimize meaning ambiguity, and I don’t understand why the word is offensive, especially considering you use “males” in your last sentence. I generally avoid using the prefix “cis” because its definition requires someone to have the same “gender identity” as their sex and what I wrote was much broader than just that group. “Females” in contrast encompasses all members of the female sex, regardless of their gender identity (e.g. pre-op transmen in this context) or whether they even have an identity (e.g. some non-binary, agender, or otherwise). I haven’t encountered the terms “genetic females” or “natural females” before but I would have assumed those would be much more offensive because of what they imply about the converse (e.g. “unnatural”). I’m not clear on the etiquette of language here, but my overall aim was precision and I apologize for inadvertently causing you offense.

  And yes, I understand that many “natural vagina-havers” (for lack of a better term, apologies if this is offensive) can have many issues with sexual intercourse, including some of the same factors I mentioned above. Just because vaginas are a necessary requirement for my attraction doesn’t mean it’s a sufficient one, and there are many other factors to consider within that realm to ensure sexual compatibility.

  I understand that voice is modifiable with training to an extent. I’ve personally never met a transwoman that passed vocally but either way I assumed arguendo that it’s at least theoretically possible with further advances in technology. Regarding smells, I admit I have limited experience with this and mostly relied on what a bisexual friend of mine who slept with several transwomen told me.

  I’m glad you have people interested in you, but I’m not sure how you interpreted anything I said to mean otherwise?

• ymeskhout 6 May 2023 4:23 UTC

  2 points

  1

  in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I do harbor some doubt as to whether an unbigoted society would contain many heterosexual men that (i) don’t want children and (ii) disprefer dating a transgender woman even if she looks externally indistinguishable from a cisgender woman. I am not confident there, but it seems odd to have such a strong innate preference purely about the history of your lover’s body.

  I apologize if any of this reply is overly gratuitous but that is difficult to avoid completely given the subject matter. I am a heterosexual male and a central component of my sexual attraction towards females is just the mechanics of penis and vagina sex (I have no interest in anal sex). I am aware that vaginoplasty exists but virtually every description I’ve encountered sounds horrific and the state of the technology is severely missing key features (natural lubrication and “stretch & bounce” for lack of a better term).

  While genitals are a necessary and non-negotiable characteristic, there are many other factors that I am attracted to in females, such as voice and smell. But assuming arguendo that medical technology advances so far that physical characteristics for transwomen are absolutely indistinguishable in every way to females — including voice and smell and including every aspect of the vagina — then yes I admit I would have fewer reasons to exclusively prefer females.

  There are some other very interesting dynamics to explore in such a hypothetical (e.g. how does puberty development factor in? How do the dynamics in the sexual marketplace around ‘status’ shift? etc.) but that would depend on the assumption contours we’re using.

• ymeskhout 6 May 2023 3:49 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  Thank you so much for being open to discuss such a sensitive topic. If you end up retracting anything, please let me know and I can edit this reply accordingly.

  I would first be interested to know why you identify as a trans man generally. Do/​did you experience dysphoria? If so, can you describe what it feels like? Would it be reasonable to split dysphoria into two different categories: body characteristics versus social role? How would you distinguish identifying as a trans man versus identifying as a masculine female (as in, what is the line that prompts the “flip” to the other side)? Has your pregnancy changed or prompted any new thoughts about your gender identity?

  I apologize in advance if any of this comes across as an interrogation, that is not intentional! I very rarely encounter many people who are willing to engage this topic critically so I’m grateful for the opportunity.

• ymeskhout 4 May 2023 23:19 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: lalaithion’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I don’t understand your objection to the Harvard analogy exactly, especially since you included it in your list. I also don’t understand how exactly you’re distinguishing “social role” from “physical fact” (which one is ‘lesbian’?) or why identifying as a Bostonian is meaningful but Harvard grad is not?

  Given that lack of clarity, I worry we have different understanding of the phrase “social role”. My definition would be something along the lines of “the set of behaviors, expectations, and responsibilities associated with a particular position or status within a group or society”. Assuming you agree with that definition, I absolutely understand why someone would care about wanting to fit into and interact with the world as a specific role.

  But desire for a particular social role is not a sufficient condition for attaining it. Babies are a social role. No one complains when they sleep all day instead of going to work, and no one is surprised when other people clean them up when they shit their pants. Babies are treated this way because they’re vulnerable and they lack this capacity to take care of themselves because of they haven’t sufficiently developed at their age. And while age is a really good proxy for self-sufficiency (especially early on) it’s obviously not the only one. See for example how we treat the elderly and the severely disabled. The simplistic analysis here would be to deny a vulnerable person the pampered treatment just because they’re too old to be a baby.

  Conversely, if I had the intent to be treated the same way as a baby — fed Gerber and pampered by a dedicated two-person team while I sleep all day — it would be reasonable to ask why I am warranted that role. If I’m able-bodied and self-sufficient, it’s reasonable for me to be denied that social role. You can call this a sort of “price of admission” to the social role if you’d like.

  I would guess that you don’t agree that segregating changing rooms by masculine appearance/​feminine appearance is correct?

  I’m not sure what made you think that? I don’t have an opinion on what the “correct” segregation method for dressing rooms should be; it would all depend on the goal you’re trying to accomplish. I brought up “minimizing sexualized attention from strangers” as just one of many possible objectives.

• ymeskhout 4 May 2023 0:08 UTC

  4 points

  1

  in reply to: lalaithion’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I think I finally understand the source of the confusion. Correct me if I’m wrong but it appears to me that you use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, where a change in the latter is (or at least should be treated as) functionally a change in the former.

  I definitely use sex as “a very strong feature of navigating the world” because I can readily point to endless circumstances where knowing someone’s sex (and the likely associated secondary characteristics) provides useful information (height, violence propensity, affinity towards trains, whatever). I recognize that someone’s sex is a dense piece of information to have because it has reliable predictive qualities.

  There’s plenty of other traits with similarly reliable predictive qualities and maybe it’s helpful to set aside sex/​gender for a bit. If I knew nothing about a person except that they’re a Harvard graduate, it’s reasonable for me to guess that they’re more likely to be intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. Obviously not every Harvard grad fits those traits, and if somehow there’s a grad whom I assume is ambitious and conceited but who idles his days as a homeless beach bum, well the error is on me.

  But suppose the only thing I knew about a person is they “identify” as a Harvard graduate. I would like to think that everyone’s first question would be “what does that mean??” and suppose this individual responds with “although I technically never went to Harvard, I am nevertheless intelligent, ambitious, privileged, conceited, etc. and it’s just easier/​faster/​simpler for me to implant that impression through a single informational payload rather than piece by piece.”

  I may not endorse this tactic, but I get it! Of course, the natural follow-up question would be “but how do we know that you’re actually any of those traits you mentioned?” and also “but how do you ensure that you implant the intended impression?” These are the exact same questions I would ask of a trans individual.

  There seems to be an attempt to reverse the inference flow. It brings to mind a post by Parrhesia:

  To illustrate this sort of semantic ethical reasoning, imagine an ethical vegan who refuses to buy her child a stuffed animal. She argues that: a stuffed animal is an animal; it is wrong to purchase animals; therefore, it is wrong to buy a stuffed animal. If you think in words, then it makes sense. But if you start thinking about reality, you’ll notice an issue. Ethical vegans are usually vegan because they don’t want to cause animal suffering, and a stuffed animal—if you wish to call it an animal or not—does not experience suffering. Whether a stuffed animal is an animal is tangential to the ethicality of purchasing it.

  We can apply this framework to any of your examples, and that’s what I was getting at in my post when I’d ask “Why does it matter?” So for example one of the concerns someone might have with undressing in public is avoiding the discomfort that might come with attracting sexualized attention from strangers. A reliable assumption is that the vast majority of people only feel sexual attraction towards the opposite sex, which is why same-sex changing rooms are such a widespread solution to this concern (obviously this is not perfectly reliable, and it also relies on the assumption that same-sex attraction did not exist).

  There’s a reason I linked to the Disguised Queries post on bleggs and rubes. The fallacy here would be assuming that the “good-enough” sorting mechanism is the end goal itself, rather than merely a useful tool to get us to our real destination. Unless you keep in mind the root purpose of the sorting mechanism, you risk coming to the erroneous conclusion that vegans think stuffed animals are immoral.

• ymeskhout 3 May 2023 0:14 UTC

  5 points

  3

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  ...the specific answers are less important here than the general idea of “let’s answer each question separately” (because different questions may have different answers).

  We may disagree on some of the answers but I emphatically concur with your approach.

• ymeskhout 3 May 2023 0:11 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: YafahEdelman’s comment on: What Bos­ton Can Teach Us About What a Wo­man Is

  I’m not at all convinced that differing definitions of words is a problem that needs a permanent solution.

  I agree! There is certainly utility in relying on language as a coordination mechanism but, though frustrating at times, there’s beauty in the fluidity of language and meaning. It’s the basis of art, poetry, and even insights sometimes.