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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   32584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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I'm not a fan of gender reassignment surgery, or hormones, or putting on a dress.

I'm actually kind of surprised by that. As a transhumanist, I would've thought you were all in support of gender reassignment surgery (since it fits in nicely with the idea of breaking out of the limitations of the meat body one was born with). Can you expand on your thinking there?

You're in luck, because just a day or so ago I went into a lengthy explanation of why I'm not an advocate of gender reassignment surgery, and why transhumanism is as distinct from trans ideology as cats are from dogs:

https://www.themotte.org/post/1794/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/311661?context=8#context

When I want to be a 6'9" muscular 420 IQ uber-mensch, I want that to be a fact about physical reality. There shouldn't be any dispute about that, no more than anyone wants to dispute the fact that I have black hair right now.

I do not think that putting on high heels and bribing my way into Mensa achieves my goal. I do not just want to turn around and say that because I identify as a posthuman deity, that I am one and you need to acknowledge that fact.

This explains why I have repeatedly pointed out that while I have no objection to trans people wanting to be the opposite sex, that they need to understand the limitations of current technology. I would have hoped that was obvious, why else would I pull terms like ersatz or facsimile out of my handy Thesaurus?

As one tanshumanist to another, my problem with this is that it seems like a very limited view of transhumanism. What I'm rooting for here is a future where I get to be some sort of shapeshifting consciousness which only occasionally reverts to humanoid form for old time's sake; not just "a 6'9" muscular 420 IQ uber-mensch". And if we get that, surely, surely you see that only joyless luddites would keep objecting to calling someone who's manifesting as a clearly-feminine angelic metaverse hologram "she", just because she doesn't have any biological female characteristics. (Because, you know, she wouldn't have any biological characteristics anymore.) Gendered language would only be based on presentation. And if Utopia involves calling people "she" even if they have no XX chromosomes if that's how they present themselves, it seems clearly morally correct to me that we should call a female-presenting person "she" even stuck as we are in flesh bodies that occasionally have spurious XY chromosomes.

I only used the example of a 6'9 genius for illustrative purposes (and it's an upgrade over my current build), I want to be a posthuman information entity running on a Matrioshka brain as much as you do. I'm pretty sure I've already said that.

And if we get that, surely, surely you see that only joyless luddites would keep objecting to calling someone who's manifesting as a clearly-feminine angelic metaverse hologram "she", just because she doesn't have any biological female characteristics. (Because, you know, she wouldn't have any biological characteristics anymore.) Gendered language would only be based on presentation. And if Utopia involves calling people "she" even if they have no XX chromosomes if that's how they present themselves, it seems clearly morally correct to me that we should call a female-presenting person "she" even stuck as we are in flesh bodies that occasionally have spurious XY chromosomes.

We're not yet at that posthuman state. People currently have certain physical and biological traits that they're unable to change even if they desperately want to change them. That's the whole thrust of my argument. Will I call someone "she" even they're not biologically female? Why not, it's not a big deal for me. Will I say that they're indistinguishable from a normal woman? No, because that's not true.

A large fraction of trans advocates make demands far more significant than merely calling people by different names or different pronouns. I personally don't care at all what toilets they use, or if they want to enter women's sports, but plenty of people do, and that's a far bigger ask.

Ah, all fair then. I think we're basically on the same page.

Trans women want to be called "she" because they would like to be biological women and forcing people to call them "she" is as close to that as they can get, barring operations. Your hypothetical hologram person doesn't want to be called "she" for this reason (because if they did, they would actually transform into a biological woman).

Gotcha. So it's not that you're opposed to those things per se, but that you're opposed to pretending like they are reaching the goal (when in fact they aren't).

That's a good summary. If there was a pill that magically turned you into the opposite gender, what business of mine is it if people take them or not? If there were people claiming to have that pill, convincing other people that worked, and resisting evidence to the contrary, then I'm against poor epistemics on principle, and I'm also a psychiatrist (in training).

https://www.themotte.org/post/1794/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/311661?context=8#context

TL;DR we aren’t there yet, but once we are, he’s not going to complain.

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