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I too would love it if rationalists were forced to bite the bullet and say something like "yes, racism (in some senses) is rational". However, I'd say that most of them are simply deliberately silent on these issues because they know that dissenting would wipe out their credibility and force them to become a full-time advocate on an issue that they don't particularly care about. For example, James Damore.
I too find it incredibly sad when the ones that do write about sensitive topics toe the line dishonestly, e.g. like Nick Bostrom did on race in his apology, and Eliezer and Scott Siskind on trans issues. I commend Zack M. Davis for calling them out on this and being brutally honest, but he has a horse in this race.
Also, what did Razib Khan and Stephen Hsu do wrong? They put their jobs on the line to talk about the truth. They didn't go so far as to explicitly say that racism (in some senses) is fine, but they pull their punches less than anyone who hasn't been banned entirely.
Why do you believe that Scott is dishonestly toeing the line on trans issues rather than genuinely believing whatever he wrote?
Zack Davis's posts on LW lay out the case for that in exhaustive detail, though he covers Yudkowsky more than Scott.
The gist of it is that Zack claims that identifying the word "male" with having the Y chromosome is carving reality at its joints, while saying that whoever decides they identify as male should be called male is a strictly worse way of describing reality.
The post implies that EY and Scott kinda agree with the biological definition being more robust in principle, but endorse the trans-favoring position out of political considerations.
I am mostly on board with Scott and EY here, even though I agree with Zack that in theory the chromosome-based definition is more robust. Being willing to die on definitional hills seems stupid. Once, "Sir" referred exclusively to English noblemen. From that, I could make the argument that the service industry should not refer to male (whatever's definition) customers as Sir unless they are indeed OBE or whatever.
But this is would be extremely stupid. Language evolves. Definitional battles are not worth it. What the Sequences would recommend doing would just be to taboo the words "male" and "female" to dissolve the conflict. Instead, we just swim with the tide.
Contrary to common belief, most interactions of humans in our society are not resulting in common offspring. The utility of tagging humans by whom they could breed with is basically zero (and in any case we would also want to encode fertility information if we were serious about that). Social genders are simply a weird leftover remnant, just like "Sir". We can adapt such words whatever we want them to mean.
Unlike blankly denying the possibility of any HBD because it would be to ugly to be true, calling a trans-man a man has no significant real life or epistemic costs. It would be different if we insisted that the cis-/trans-prefix and talking about sex chromosomes is verboten, and society would advise a trans-man, and cis-woman couple to just try to following a cycle calendar or specific sex positions if they have trouble conceiving a child.
The woke definition has big upsides for trans people for little costs, so I would prefer it even if I was language czar and could decide what "male" means. The ratsphere pushing back against that would be as ludicrous as if the New Atheists had decided that their No 1 priority was getting rid of "OMG" in chats.
Trans people want to be called by their assumed sex because they're well aware that the word for that sex already has a preexisting meaning, and they want to be treated as though that preexisting meaning applies to themselves. Claiming that words can mean anything you want is disingenuous because if the words really did mean anything you wanted, trans people would no longer want to use them. And Zack already covered all of this.
The "sir" analogy doesn't work because people who want to be called "sir" don't do so because they want to be treated like English noblemen. The word did once refer to English noblemen, but people today are not using the word because they want to get in on the English nobleman business.
Zack's extensive posts include direct references to the Sequences recommending otherwise.
You are conflating "not pushing back" with "actively promoting".
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It sounds like you think this definitional battle is, in fact, worth it?
I'm encouraged that you acknowledged that there are costs - can you elaborate? I think Zac would claim that one serious downstream cost is autogynophiles being encouraged to castrate themselves. To me that is the main problem - confused and unhappy people being encouraged to mess up their bodies unrecoverably. I think that frank acknowledgement of the senses in which, due to the limitations of medical technology, trans people aren't actually their desired gender, would lessen this problem. So I do think that this is a definitional battle worth fighting (as do pro-trans advocates).
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The cis-/trans- prefix is already on the spectrum of verboten. Behold, the parts of woke subculture that insist on spelling transwoman as two words. This is to emphasize the woman-ness of transwomen and de-emphasizes the transness as a mere modifier, like brunette.
Similarly, if you hang around progressives and always refer to cis women as just "women" and always refer to trans women as "trans women" I am pretty sure you'd get a talking to, eventually. I hope nobody is silly enough to say, "Well that's just a couple crazy people on reddit." I know because my real-life woke friends don't actually mention that someone is trans unless it's to mention how fearful they are for their safety somewhere as a victim.
That you suggest to taboo the word "male" (not "man!") shows just how far down the slippery slope these language games have moved us this past decade. At first, progressives merely claimed the word "man," and left "male" around for us to talk about chromosomes. Sure enough in the current year, progressives act like man and male are synonyms again!
I predict that the ever-more-cumbersome phrases we retreat to, like "biological sex," will also get phased out. Make no mistake, the purpose of putting trans and cis into the same mental bucket is to push normative behaviors onto people. Someone saying "no, no I only date people with a biological sex of female, you see..." is told, "that's not a sexual orientation, that's just bigotry."
What the sequences actually say about defining a word any way you like is that it is a common misconception
I am kind of with Scott on this one. Love is the one area where one can discriminate. People are attracted to what they are attracted, which includes presenting gender, what kind of interface the other person has between their legs, skin color, body type, hair color, relative height, dialects, high nobility, potential for offspring, appearance, socioeconomic status, criminal record and anything else under the sun.
And for what it is worth, I don't think that this "either date transgender or be called a bigot" will fly even in the LGBTQWhatever community. If some hairy dude goes into a lesbian bar, declares that he identifies as a woman and challenges some lesbian to take him home or be a bigot, then the queers will not be on the side of the dude.
Have you seen what's happened to lesbians lately? They have absolutely been attacked for "don't ask women to suck your dick at a lesbian bar" policies! The thing you're suggesting would never happen already happened 5 or 6 years ago, and with the full support of the lgbtqxyz++ media!
Fair point. I can see why such policies might be instituted to solve the problem of basically-cishet-guys hitting on lesbians, as well as how this would affect the odd genuine trans-lesbian.
There is still a difference between deciding "no dicks allowed" for a bar than deciding that for one's own sexual partners. Ideally one would have a different lesbian bars with different admittance policies (no dicks, must present female, must self-identify female) and let the market do its work. This would likely result in all the guys deciding to claim female identity as a ploy to get laid ending up in one bar, where they can then give each other BJs if they really feel it is bigot to not be into cocks.
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My favorite example of this is complaints about the "cotton ceiling"[https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/6a3e3a/who_else_here_is_put_off_by_the_idea_of_the/]("cotton ceiling"), which to me paints a hilarious and sad picture of aspergers guys becoming trans as a gambit of rules-lawyering lesbians into sleeping with them.
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I was thinking of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
but that's fair, it might just have been motivated cognition. But given that Scott has independently reached unpopular contrarian opinions on his own so many times, and doesn't address the downsides of gender-defined-by-fiat head on, it's almost the same phenomenon as dishonesty imo.
I think it's definitely motivated cognition in the case of Scott. (But toeing the line for Bostrom.)
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